


nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved

by xpatxperience



Series: The Abolitionists [2]
Category: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain, Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
Genre: Abolitionist Huck, Civil War, Confederate Army, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Racism, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Spies, Surgeon Tom, war related violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-03-28 09:07:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 43,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13900809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpatxperience/pseuds/xpatxperience
Summary: This was the plan.Huck was to blend into the middle of the battlefield, clothed in the enemy's uniform, be taken to their camp, and find the missing plans that would help end this vicious war.What was currently happening was very far from the plan.





	1. Day October 15, 1864

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this while watching a department of lands presentation to the house committee of environmental affairs.

Nadia Calthoon was to meet with a woman on the corner of 4th and Main at two o'clock in the afternoon. Everybody knew somebody in this war. It acted more like the third horseman of the apocalypse, pestilence, as it swept over the country. Men were left frothing at the mouth - rabid for hot blood to flood over their hands. Nadia was planned to met the wife of one such gentleman, a good woman who saw the corruption of the war in the whites of her husband's eyes.

 

The woman was bringing forth the uniform of her husband; who’s mouth and fists had both gotten him equally barred from fighting for the good cause of the Confederacy. Though there was no lack of need of bodies to go die on fields, there were plenty of younger men than him to take his place. After all, those of age would be needed to rule what was left of the land when the war eventually - hopefully - came to a close. 

 

As Nadia stood there, the humidity soaking into her dark skin, she cast her eyes downwards letting the ghostly faces pass her by. If they paid any attention to her, which she thought was very unlikely, as  _ they _ had better use of their thoughts than to waste them on the ragged black woman standing in the middle of the Southern heat. Therefore Nadia played her part well and submitted unto society herself for their consideration. 

 

It was due to her submissive facade that she did not notice the woman approaching her. Her dress and looks were the same as any other gentry whos eyes slide from one building to the next, passing over Nadia in a rush to escape the blistering sun, but this woman’s eyes were darting around frantically looking back and forth like a broken grandfather clock. 

 

The woman, who knew what she had to do as her husband had attended the meeting in the barn late at night in her place, moved forward with sudden determination towards the darkened part of the street. She held her arms tighter across her chest, gripping her fingers together as if the item she was holding would slip between the cracks of her knuckles. She closed in on Nadia, who stood still and unwavering. Twenty feet. Ten Feet. Five feet.

 

The woman collided with Nadia and then Nadia collided with the dust and dung plane of the well trodden Main street. The woman, who up until that time had not really thought of any words to say in the moment but knowing that their small commotion must be covered up with the typical crass and brutality, merely pulled her lips back into a sneer and dropped a violitle hiss at Nadia who did her best to continue to cower. 

 

The woman then walked away. Nadia stood and noticed with some dismay that her elbow was bleeding. But it was worth it. Because when Nadia rose from the gutter she had clutched tightly against the folds of her dress, the uniform of a confederate soldier. She dusted herself off the best she possibly could, not for any real need of wanting to clean her dress, for the reused garment from her days as a slave was to be burned as soon as she returned back to the church, but more for the implementation to those around her that this was  _ totally  _ the only clothing she owned and she was  _ absolutely  _ nothing more than a slave running errands for a vacant master. 

 

With the primping and preening done, Nadia clutched to her chest their resistance’s most prized possession, for without with grey suit in her arms their entire plan was shot, and pivoted to walk back the way she had come towards the steeple of St. Paul’s Methodist Church looming in the vacant far out distance.  

 

And it was due to her hyperaware urge to get the transaction over with neither Nadia nor the woman notice the man in the white shirt with the red tie watching them from the coffee house across the street. 

 

\--

This was the plan.

Reverend Andrew Goodard, born Anshel Ginzberg, was to stand on the porch of St. Paul’s Methodist Church squinting out onto Jefferson Street and wait for the black dot to appear among the blinding white faces.

 

Reverend Goodard couldn’t tell if the sweat that seemed to be creating the Dead Sea on his back was due to the temperature that seemed to rival the pits of hell, or if it was him imagining the pits of hell due to the deception and sinning they were about to pull off in a matter of hours. 

 

The small part of his brain where he hid all of his best secrets, told him that it was the latter. But why worry about one more deception when so many had been committed to get him here. The real Reverend who was supposed to take up the pulpit position while the regular minister took upon a sabbatical had unfortunately never received his letter of call when it fell into the hands of the young boy inside. 

 

A young boy in the Reverend’s eyes, who was soon approaching the age of forty eight and therefore to him, nineteen was an infant. Nineteen was the age when his fellow classmates left to go fight once more against the imperial powers, the northerners, and the natives all at once. They had lost that war, and the Reverend was determined not to lose this one.

 

Then out on the horizon appeared the dark dot he had been looking for and had no more time to lament the past or his actions and could only run over the following steps for the interaction that was to come. The street was mostly cleared, it being a Wednesday afternoon and all, but the pious noticed everything and in the middle of a civil war every action was a suspicious action. 

 

Therefore when Nadia approached the Reverend and asked what time Easter mass was. He replied with a smile and the answer of, 

“Changes every year.”

She smiled back at him, thanked him for his time, wished God would bless him, and then walked away.

Left in her spot was the buckled bundle of grey fabric. The Reverend took the now less carefully folded fabric from the wooden stoop and entered into his church closing the door behind him and locking it for safe measures. If anyone wished to pray at this hour they would just have to be Presbyterian for a day and go next door. 

 

His eyes slowly adjusted to the lack of energy entering into his pupils and as they expanded the Reverend walked carefully down the flight of spiral stairs in the anteroom of the chapel that brought him down to the concrete basement level where resided a wall of blessed wine to represent his holiness’ blood, a door leading into a bedroom which housed his own personal belongings and a table, which sat next to it was a person who was currently wearing khakis, the color of another uniform for war, with a white shirt and dark suspenders. Too soon the boy would be dressed in the scratchy grey wool and sent off to the great machine that takes all boys and turns them into men. For the only difference between a boy and a man is with blood. 

 

The man stood up from the table and took the bundle from the Reverend who just smiled a tight lipped smile and guided the other man to his own room to allow some privacy while he changed. The Reverend wished it could be him that went and laid out among the dead souls in the thick of the blood and mirth, letting the screams and gunshots fly over his head. Such things were those that should be saved for old men like him who would soon be with the heavenly father of the universe and not for those with an entire life left to relive the nightmares in the depth of the night. But alas, such deception of injury as they were planning might result in the actual injury of the Reverend, and while thoughts and prayers were bountiful, they did little to stop bullets. Secondly, though no one would mention it, the Reverend, while being able to vote, still had about him his Jewish features.  

 

The door creaked open and out stepped into the room a full fledged confederate soldier. Well, all except for the shoes His own dark leather boots would have to do, even though they only reached mid calf instead of his knee. They figured if this all went off, proper boots would be the least of their worries. 

 

Both being men of few words the Reverend merely clapped his compatriot on the shoulder and decided that no words could assist the situation and instead guided him upwards and out of the church to where the sun had seemed to fallen in the sky. There, waiting for them, was the next step in the seemingly unending plan to bring about critical change. 

 

But because the small cart was waiting there with the horse sniffing around at the ground and the woman in the front seemed to want to get this over with soon than later, the Reverend simplified helped the soldier into the cart and squeezed his hand, letting all of his good thoughts and karma go with him.

 

And then there was the crack of the reigns. And then they were gone. 

 

\--

This was the plan.

 

Sophia Alcott was to take the man who came out of the church and drive him through the night to the town of Glasgow, Missouri. Said town would be the newest venue for yet another war in Trans-Mississippi theater of this corrupted war as well as having the added benefit of being a battle fought for General Sterling Price’s never ending expansion to control the entire state of Missouri for the Confederate States of America.

Can she get an Amen?

 

Since the only person in the rambling cart was a man a suffering from a severe case of abolitionism and herself a pivotal part in the underground railroad, it remained silent. For their own good as well, as the silence was their main protector against those who lived in the night and would stumble upon their caravan of one and might suspect something is afoot. More likely, anyone traveling a night would scare away anyone looking due to the air of mischief, but the roles were so reversed that the travelers hearts were beating so fast, Sophia would have swore hers wasn’t beating at all. 

 

The night came to pass as they traveled the dirty road to the open field where their other patriots in the North had given them the information that this would be the place when Price would be making one of the assaults. The assault was one designed to bring in artillery to the Southern Army, that under the blockade, had been slowly declining due to the lack of funds. The money of the Confederacy would do better to last as wallpaper then as actual currency. Yet, despite the setbacks and the losses, the army of the South waged on; for as long as there were those who wished to be free from centralized government there would be those to fight for that right of liberty. 

 

However, Sophia remembered the right to life was also inscribed in the Declaration of Independence. 

 

The night was wearing thin and now the sun was able to peek through the holes of the fabric of the night sky. It’s yellowish tint cast the light of the new day upon them. They day in which all the hopes of rebellion and liberation of Missouri from the grasp of General Price lay out upon the two spies. The encampment of General Curtis, located many miles to the North of the town of Glasgow, was waiting for the single letter of critical information that would allow the Army of the Border to wrangle together and win a decisive victory. 

They had the numbers. They had the weapons. They had the battle plan. 

All that was to be done now is figure out,  _ where? _

That is precisely what the man wearing the facade of a uniform next to Sophia was to figure out in a few days time and report back. It was far from the most dangerous mission, for there were some who were so far up the chain of command death or victory were the only options, nor was it the lengthiest for all he had to do was find out where they would be marching to in the morning, then do what he did best - sneak away. Yet, this mission held in it the importance of securing a state for the Union - and that was no small thing. 

 

Therefore, as the first shots rang out and the Battle of Glasgow had officially begun, Sophia felt no nervousness for her own life but nervousness for the burden of importance that had been vested upon her shoulders. They were on the edge of the town now and could see the smoke billowing out from the center where she assumed the Confederacy had made their breech and were attempting to capture all items of military use, they would hardly notice another soldier carrying back a contained of gunpowder. 

 

There was no time for pleasantries as the fighting could stop as quickly as it started. The man jumped down from the cart, gave her a small nod, then took off running in the direction of the screaming and echoing booms. She assumed this would be the last she saw of him until forty eight hours had passed but since she was a woman, and no one expected them to have any agenda let alone a sinister one she decided to venture forward, just to assure the plan had at least  _ begun _ successfully. 

 

She made her way slowly through the mass of people fleeing to their homes, hoping to escape the stray bullets that might enter their backs. She kept to the outskirts of the fighting, trying to discern the difference of the men among the unification that came with a uniform. The screaming had all but vanished and the echoes from bullets exiting guns had died down until they were few and far between. Sophia saw no harm in getting a little bit closer, to try and see if there was any infighting which might allude to the abortion of this mission. 

 

A crack resounded then that almost took Sophia’s soul to heaven with how fast her heart started to race in her chest. The sound shaved through her head like a nail file cutting her sanity to shreds. Still she managed to keep her focus forward, towards the cause of such a dastardly noise. It was hard to tell but she swore she saw someone fall to the ground.

Someone she recognized. 

And she knew in that instance something had gone terribly wrong. 

 

\--

This was the plan.

Huck Finn, a nineteen year old native of Missouri, had been entrusted with getting information that could quite possibly save his state from falling further into the control of an army that basically stood for everything Huck thought could fall to the ground. 

No pressure. 

 

The stolen uniform rubbed his neck raw as he ran through the tree side landscape of Glasgow, Missouri heading towards the sounds that, to any other person, would have them run away from. But Huck was currently following step 17C of a 62F step process, of which no steps included running away from the danger. In fact, most of it included looking God in the eyes and walking backwards into hell. Huck Finn knew this, in all its details, before he found himself running through a ransacked Missourian town, as the resistance up North had not shrouded any of their plans in innuendos or euphemisms and had told him, exactly how dangerous this plan was going to be.

 

But wars are dangerous, and this one especially so. Huck Finn had spent little time in the clutches of those who saw people as animals, or worse yet, people as things. He was well acquainted with the feeling of being  _ less than _ . Though there was no situation in his past that could mirror the injustice faced to those he stood by, there were plenty that were a lesser imitation, and those in themselves could make a grown man’s stomach curtle. 

 

He was familiar with the objectification of those who were somehow seen as less than human due to things that were entirely out of their control. Who decided to lay together for a night and curse the child that they make because of who they are and where they have been. Or better yet, the destination on Earth where the cursed child falls into the world. Man made lines cutting up this Earth is the cause of separation for those in affluence and those who die in the streets. But God had a plan, God knew what he was doing, God looks out for us all.

 

Most forget God’s people were slaves once. 

 

See Huck had never heard about The Union, he never saw The Union, he didn’t give a  _ fuck  _ about The Union. Huck hated being told what to do, especially from those who had never felt  _ real  _ hunger, but he hated hypocrisy more. His decision to stick his hands into the guts of the civil war came when he realized that the same people crying out about how it was a human right to be free from those in power where the ones who went home early to check on their slaves. 

And  _ that _ , was hypocrisy on the highest level.

 

Therefore, once the resistance had in its memberships a young man of caucasian featured (no matter how tall and miseducated, for they could do something about the ignorance of the world but reconstructing bone features would take a miracle of God -- and they had run out of God given miracles) it came upon them the possibility of actually aiding in the slaughter between brothers. 

 

Thus, a plan was made. A plan that people who lived after the year 1942 would call a  _ plan held together by duct tape and dreams.  _ A plan that had a calculated chance of 61.3% chance of failure. A plan that required Huck Finn to pretend to be a confederate soldier, sneak into General Price’s camp, steal information, and make it out all before A) anyone realized that he shouldn’t be there or B) they decided to move camp. 

Easy enough, right?

 

At least that is what Huck thought at the forefront of his mind as he fell in line with the other grey coats marching back with guns and bullets and cannons and anything else that goes boom and kills people. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind lived the rational thought of all the things that could happen, such as him opening his mouth and calling the man with a very pronounced mustache that he’s a raging bigot. So Huck wires his mouth shut and continues to help push the destruction weapon of the week along the raging flow of the current down to wherever it was based camp was set. 

 

Or at least that’s what Huck Finn’s plan was. Follow the line of soldiers, keep in line, don’t get caught. 

That’s the plan.

_ That’s the only plan. _

And that would have been the plan, and everything would have gone off without a hitch and Huck Finn would have indeed made it back at the right time and place, if it wasn’t for Samuel Hunt who at that moment decided to drop his  _ already loaded gun _ in favour of picking up a rather interesting trinket on the side of the road. Said gun fired off and processed to enter and exit a full barrel of gunpowder in less than two milliseconds. For all those who have not studied the law of thermodynamics and understand heat conductivity, what then occured was the transfer of energy from the bullet to approximately 20 kilograms of  _ premade explosion. _ Huck didn’t even have the chance to register the deafening explosion before something very sharp and definitely  _ not supposed to be there  _ was entering into his leg and shoulder. 

 

As Huck Finn felt his consciousness leave his body he couldn’t help but think that what was currently happening was very far from the plan. 


	2. Dusk October 15, 1864

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Between playing safe and playing fair - Huck had always chosen safe. Now was not one of those times.

     Pain was something that Huck Finn was accustomed too. He had learned to live with it the way one who lived below the equator learned to live with rain or one who lived on the Indian continent learned to deal with heat. It was something that purely existed and those around it were forced to deal with it. 

     With that being said, Huck Finn might have been used to being burned and bruised, but at least his blood stayed in his body, where blood is - you know - supposed to be. What Huck Finn was not used to, was being the backboard for some very sharp shrapnel that issued in the same injuries as being shot in both the leg and the shoulder. Huck Finn found himself in a scarrily familiar situation as he found himself lying somewhere unfamiliar with his body informing him that he was in quite a lot of pain at the moment. 

     Him and seemingly everyone else who occupied the long bare hallway that seemed to be filled with nothing but  _ white.  _ It was off throwing, the sheets, the wall, the light from the windows, the  _ people.  _ He seemed to be at the end of a line of beds that all held people in different stages of consciousness, groaning and moaning hoping that their noises might easy their pain. 

     Huck looked down at his lower half of his body, just to make sure that he still had all the same body parts as when he was born. Though he couldn’t exactly feel his left leg he noticed the shape was definitely their under the thin cotton sheet that had been thrown over his lower half. 

     He lifted his hands and flexed his fingers in front of his face. All of his fingers where up and running but when he tired to lift his arm up more than a couple of inches it seemed to send a blinding bolt of pain shooting through his body. He glanced over and saw that the white bandage that was once pristine was now starting to turn a dark red. He wasn’t quite able to swallow his scream all the way and a pained cry escaped out to join the chorus of other complaints. He however, somehow drew the attention from the man in the white shirt who had seemed to be otherwise occupied by cleaning off some equipment. Huck tried to close his eyes and pretend he had never woken, but it was too late. He could hear the man’s approach. 

    “Glad you’ve joined the land of the conscious. Friendly fire is no way to go out. I’m the Surgeon’s Assistant, Sergeant Sawyer.” said the man who, up close now, looked to be no older than a student, let alone someone who should have the word surgeon in front of their name. Huck looks at him trying to figure out what lie would make this man leave Huck alone for enough time to let him slip away. Maybe he won’t notice the red seeping out of his shoulder and go away. 

    “I know how much that hurts.” Sawyer continues pointing to the blooming mass of red on Huck’s shoulder and consequently ruining all hopes of an easy escape. “Tearing stitches that is.” He takes a seat on the empty bed next to Huck and rolls up the cuff of his pants to where Huck can see a jagged and raised scar running clear down the man’s shin. 

     “I got hit during some small scrimish between us and a small battalion of Union men. I had to sew the damn thing up myself after walking three miles to get further help. Not sure if I ever got the bullet fully out. That’d be something.” He covers the scar once more and stands, coming over to unravel the wet bandage on Huck’s shoulder. “Couldn’t fight anymore but still indebted to this fine army I became a professional seamstress.” 

     Huck wondered if all medical staff talked this much or if God just hated Huck in particular because He knew that Huck did not have time for this. Given the fact that he was blown to bits in the first place, he’d have to guess the latter. 

     “Though I guess there are worse things to become in this war. Dead, being the first. Though there are some men who might think they were better off dead. Missing arms, and legs, and the side of their faces.” He looks at Huck, maybe to see if he knows what he’s talking about or if there is any sympathy in Huck’s face. Finding neither, he continues, “Hopefully your wound won’t be to bad. As long as you didn’t tear the skin we should be just fine.” The bandage drops to the side and Huck stares straight ahead while Sawyer surveys the damage and as he touches the wound Huck suddenly realized why the man was talking so much as the silence between them heightens Huck’s consciousness to the amount of pain he is currently in. Something on Huck’s face must show his awful revelation as Sawyer comments, 

    “I can get some opium if you’d like, though it would take some time to settle and you’d have a higher chance of getting an infection -- the damn thing seems to be eating away more people than guns these days. Them good old science boys say it lives in the air, but we don’t see anything - ever - that could eat someone away like that.” 

Huck did not really care about the spread of infection at the moment and was much more concerned with getting out of here as fast as physically possible. He had a rebellion to keep alive after all. 

     “I don’t care. Just do what you have to do.” Sawyer looks at him with a strange look then, one of surprise and interest and intrigue all rolled into one face.

     “Have to say. Never heard that before. Usually there is some praying and swearing involved.” He replied, but pulled out some thread, no opium in sight.

     “Not much of the God talking type.” Huck responded trying to keep his breathing a steady as possible - with the key word being trying. 

     “In this war? You are going to need all the God given help you can get.” Were Sawyer’s final words before he started the process of stitching together Huck’s broken skin. Feeling much less apathetic about keeping the man in his good graces since he was on the receiving end of quite a lot of pain at the moment Huck loosens his tongue. 

    “You don’t look like a surgeon.” Huck said through his gritted teeth, noting the apparent lack of a grey wool coat and instead a white shirt that seemed to be permanently stained with blood.

    “Surgeon assistance. Very important difference. All of the glory but none of the liability.” He continues to reset the threat in Huck’s shoulder, making Huck wring the bed sheet tightly in his hand. “And what exactly are surgeons supposed to look like? We can’t all be fake Harvard professors. Anyone who has a halfway decent license would not give up that kind of paycheck to fight for freedom.” 

     Huck ignores that last part and instead clarifies, “I mean your uniform. Don’t you have the red cuffs?” Before their group of liberation fighters had found the woman, they had thought it might be easier to pose as medical personnel, who were rumored to be in short supply. Huck could now confirm those rumors to be true since he seemed to have just have been stitched up by a person his own age. 

     “Ahh, well, all they gave me when I transfered over was some red ribbon to sew on the sleeve of my army coat. But it was the middle of July and I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be tragic if I misplaced this coat and didn’t have to wear wool in the middle of summer?’ So sadly, the coat did not make it through the Battle of Carray.” 

    Now that Huck could concentrate on something other than not passing out due to the burning sensation that was consuming his shoulder. He did notice that the man’s sleeves were not rolled up, but instead secured with the red ribbon around them. Technicalities, Huck guessed. 

    “Though now that we are in the middle of October and the temperature drops at night I am starting to have some regrets. -- that reminds me. If you or anyone else complains of appendages not going numb in the night let me know, the extra heat is probably a sign of infection.” Sawyer continues, wrapping up the wound again having finished with his job. 

    “Don’t you have things to do? People to sew up? Legs to amputate? Life saving surgeries to perform?” Huck asked. The doctor - excuse him,  _ surgeon's assistant - _ seemed to be finished fixing whatever damage Huck had done in the short amount of time he’d even been injured. Huck hoped that maybe if he was short and argumentative enough the man would get fed up and leave him alone. It was a tactic that seemed to work for everyone else in his life. 

    “Surgeons assistant remember? And we’ve had quite a lot of battles in Missouri as of late, so yours truly gets to make sure all of y’all don’t do anything stupid so you can go shoot some more people… and then probably get shot again… come back here and the cycle repeats itself.” He says this with a smirk and a light sense of humor but the truth behind it hits Huck in a weird way. HIts him right next to his developed sense that the more soldiers who died the quicker the war would end. 

    “We all chose to fight in this war. Isn’t that what- “ Huck has to swallow his  _ you  _ and say, “we are fighting for? Choice?” Sawyer squints his eyes and sits down on the empty bed - not a good sign that he’s thinking about leaving Huck alone in the near future. 

    “I’m not sure where you come from - but where I’m from - you don’t have much of a choice about being in this war.” Huck mentally rolls his eyes at that answer. Everyone has a choice, and sometimes the right choice is the hardest one to make. “The war comes and you either die, or you fight for what you believe in.” 

    “And what is it you believe in?” Huck was genuinely curious now; curious about his answer and about the man who only seemed to be powered by Huck’s argumentative nature. 

    “Same as you I suppose. The ability to live my life unafraid” Sawyer answers. Huck has learned not to bring up the contradictions in those words. That someone who thinks gunshots and nightmares are going to help is lying to themselves. “But since that’s probably never going to happen, now that I’ve seen a man’s organs fall out of his body. I guess I’ll settle for making sure that as many people get out of this thing alive.” Sawyer continues, a strange counter to Huck’s private thoughts. “The more the merrier - isn’t that how the saying goes?” 

    “You sound like you really care about human lives.” Huck bites at him - a accusation to a man who doesn't know he’s in an argument. 

    “I have to. It’s my job.” The man responds, not missing a beat or picking up on the sarcasm. “Which is why I have to apparently watch out for you and your tendency to rip out all of my hard work.” 

    “I can tell when I’m injured.” That statement was true. His childhood of being the sounding board for a drunken man's anger had taught him how to feel when something was broken versus sprained. What would heal naturally and what had to be reset. That bruising didn’t alway mean bad, but it did teach him that, “Pain means nothing.” 

    “Pain means something is healing.” Sawyer stood at that and came to stand next to Huck’s bed, a look of confusion about him. “You do want to heal don’t you?” Huck says nothing. Just looks down at the white sheet, in the white room, with all the white people. 

    “Then if it is all the same to you, I’d love for you to let me do my job.” From the corner of his vision Huck can see Sawyer’s smile, grinning with success. He might have lost this battle - but he’s still fighting in the war.

    “You don't’ even know who I am. Hell, I don’t even your name.” Huck exclaims, one last ditch attempt to banish this annoyance from his presence. 

    “That doesn’t matter, I have a duty to help those in need.” He responds settling down to inspect the wound that had since been forgotten on Huck’s leg. “And my name is Tom, by the way. Tom Sawyer.”

    Huck knows that he shouldn’t give out his real name, that between being honest and being safe he’d always played it close to the chest. But something about the situation, that a confederate doctor had enough trust in the world to stitch together someone he knew nothing about… that deserved some respect. 

Fuck it.

    “Huck Finn.”


	3. June 17, 1862

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Planning should be left to those who value reason. Not to those who walk three miles with a bullet in their leg -- no matter how cool that might be.

    Tom Sawyer was not a planner.

    There were people who lived out their lives knowing what event would fall after the next, just as sure that the sky would remain blue. There were those who could list out what they were going to do that day with absolute certainty. There were those who knew what they were doing all the time and at any point.

Tom was not one of these people.

    Tom was one of those people who said _fuck it_ and and would probably die after uttering the words, "What it's going to do? Kill me?" Because when you grow up living in a state of never ending gratuity and never ending rights of passage -- you think you're bulletproof.

    But he soon learned he was not bulletproof.

    Tom Sawyer knew of war. Knew of it in the abstract sense, in the sense one knows of the president, in the sense one knows of the words _every cloud has a silver lining._ In the way one knew of something's existence but had yet to understand it.

     But who needs to understand the greater finite points of slaughter when there are battles that need to be won happening in fields just beyond your line of sight? When there are men going off to win the free land in a nation that had fallen just like its predecessor had to corruption and political folly. They were the Alexandre Manette’s of the Union; imprisoned by their own state for thinking of reason and logic in a time of petty morality.  

    The Art of War was no longer contained in 5th century Chinese literature but was playing out in Tom Sawyer’s own life time and he would be damned to hell before he gave up the opportunity to be memorialized for ten centuries to come. Wars were the placards of history and he was going to get his name on this one and be remembered in Confederate history as one of the best soldiers who ever saw the battlefield.

    Tom Sawyer first heard of the American Civil War not long after the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. The state of Missouri, two states over from the beginning of the revolution, had done good to Tom in and throughout his childhood, allowing him to grow next to an ever expanding river guarded by thick brush. Had done good to him by allowing him to run free, get hurt, and stand back up. Had allowed him to be happy and content and free of the terror that there was something watching him with silent and all knowing judgement.

    And people wanted to come and take this freedom away from these people? Those people who didn't know that James lost his wife last year and was now raising three children. Or that Paulette had just finished nursing school. Or that Betty was coming down with a cough that would not go away. Washington just cared that money came in to support the people who couldn't be damned to make good with a community that could take care of them.

    And that overpowering apathy is what ate away at Tom Sawyer.

    They were United States citizens too, and if they weren't going to be treated as such they had no choice but to rebel against the oppressors whom had taken the executive power.

     It was woven into the Declaration of Independence, " _But when a long train of abuses and usurpations… reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security._ ” Who were they to argue with what Thomas Jefferson himself had envisioned for this country? One can not pick and choose what the founding fathers had planned.

    Well, the southern states of the former United States where throwing out their own Declaration of Independence, one that told the apathetic senators up on the hill to mind their own damn business, and Missouri was coming along weather it liked it or not.

     For someone who grew up in a house of women, one might expect him to have a bit of a soft soul for those who would be systematically put at a disadvantage by those in power. There would be no misunderstanding if the public placed Tom Sawyer on the other side of the guns that were currently shooting at his grey covered form. One might reason that he would understand the heartache of women and how their bones were laced with pain. Reason, however, was never in the forefront of Tom Sawyer’s mind at any given point. Reason was the thing that held weaker men back when action needed to be taken. Did King Arthur stand at the side and reason whether or not to go and kill that horrific dragon?

    No because he is King Arthur - motherfucking dragon killer.

   Though Tom Sawyer had yet to strip the fictionality from the Civil War, yet to experience it outside of a literary context, one that was taught to him in books of war. He could not strip himself of that feeling of injustice that came down from those in power. War was made by those who thought ideas were better then lives. But the ideas, it protected -- my God. They were worth it.

    The excitement of war still lived within him as the textual influence to grab a gun and fight had taken a mantle so firmly in his state of being. Later, there would come to stand more cautionary tales: _Les Mis,_ then later _For Whom the Bell Tolls,_ and later yet _Slaughterhouse Five._

   But that was later, and this was now. Now there was only the ever pressing feeling that something had to be done and something had to be done _now._

    This feeling that seemed to encompass Tom Sawyer is what lead him, and so many like him, to enlist in and Army that would protect what they could and kill for what they couldn’t. And Tom, as in all assets of life might not have had a plan enrolling the the Confederate Army, but he definitely had a list of things that shouldn't happen.

Getting dysentery.

Getting lost.

Getting shot.

 

The searing pain in the side of his calf told him that he was only two for three right now.

    Being shot is not an experience that is pleasant for anyone. There are several parts that make up, what has to be, one of the most painful and down right uncomfortable scenarios that the human condition has probably developed. That and eating a soft grape. The one of the things that nobody thinks about is the noise. The gun does not only assault your sense of feeling, but your sense of hearing as well. Apparently, Samuel Colt thought it acceptable for you to be almost deafened by the sound of metal being shot into your body as well as having it enter you. It also hits your sense of smell as your blood pours out of your body, as your heart was works uselessly to fill the ever expanding interstitial space. The smell of blood is never one that precedes good things.

      The first thought to come to Tom's mind was not about infection or blood loss or shock or any of the things he was trained to think of but instead was,

_I’ve been shot. Holy shit. I have GOT to tell Mark. He will never believe this. This is so cool._

    Which is a sentence that could probably sum up Tom Sawyer’s entire personality from that point into the past. Therefore, Tom Sawyer walked three miles propelled not by the determination to see his family again or to keep fighting for his country or by spite to get back at the shooter, but by the attention and amaze that he would receive at completing the task of getting shot by the enemy then walking back to base camp to tell the tale.

    All the while the bullet lodged firmly in his leg was eating away at the percentage the he would ever see a battlefield again. It was telling him so in the way it fired off neurons to his brain, but Tom - too drunk on excitement - felt nothing. Which is how Tom Sawyer arrived at his garrison looking much more like a vengeful wraith than a human man. As he came into view of those who had more practical modes of transportation after being injured in the knock down drag out battle that had just occurred, he was met with faces of incredulous wonder.

Tom Sawyer thought this was the pinnacle of his life.

Tom Sawyer that this was the pinnacle of his life until he was informed that the three ounces of copper that was now being removed from it's fleshy prison would bar him from continuing on in active military combat.

     Three ounces of copper. That's what stood between Tom and his density of helping save Missouri from falling under authorization rule.

Three ounces of copper.

Fired from the barrel of a nineteen year old kid who was aiming for Tom's head.

Three ounces of copper.

    That's what caused Tom Sawyer to pull out what everyone knows as ‘southern charm’, but in this instance might be called by a better name - manipulation, and began to convince the reporting captain that he did not need to send the camp surgeon to assist because Tom had physician training and ( _oh yeah weren't we looking for more of those_ ) could stitch himself up ( _remember how all those assistant doctors quit?)_ so the captain need not worry about him ( _because he is a competent medical person)._

    After being assigned to assist Head of Surgery, Doctor Steve Rickson he would learn later that combat medics need to stop penetrating trauma ( _such as the trauma Tom inflicted upon himself_ ). He would learn later that the best way to save a life is to stop tissue damage from projectiles ( _such as the damage done by Tom to himself_ ). He would learn later that bullets can move inside a person and have the potential to cut through entire arteries, carve abysses of destruction through veins, all while sitting firmly inside someone’s body - hours after the genital gun has gone off.

(He would never learn that the only reason he was not dead was pure, unadulterated, absolute, dumb chance.)

  But as stated, that is later. This is now, and in the now, Tom is stiching up his own leg.

Without painkillers.

Having never held a needle in his life.

Because Tom Sawyer was **_NOT_ ** being discharged from this army if it was the last thing he ever did.

This army was everything to him now - and he would do anything to say.

Even if it meant an eight and three quarter scar on his body because when life gives you lemons -- Tom Sawyer sells  them in a pyramid scheme.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for someone who spent eight hours a day with local government i found i am not that great at writing about local government


	4. Night October 15, 1864

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They try to dampen their voices as they argue into the night over everything; yet nothing at all. And for some reason, it feels right.

    Tom taps his pencil against the table, beating out an old rhythm that he probably could not even name anymore. Tom’s life as a medical professional, professional used in the very  _ very  _ loose sense of the word, was built upon a routine that had been regurgitated into him the the surgeon general. You got up, you ate with the other assistants, you went and gave out morning medicine, you went and helped amputate someone’s leg, you went and measured out medicine for the next day, you went and rebandaged someones arm - it was a puzzle that consisted of the same pieces, and no matter which way you arranged it, only made the same picture. 

    But today was strange. Today was strange because for the first time in a long while, when Tom sat down with the other poor sons of bitches that had the label of surgical assistant and was asked what he did that day, he could actually remember. He was aware of his actions for, what felt like, the first time ever. Or at least, since he stopped getting shot at started sewing people up. He thinks it has something to do with this morning. With Mr. War is A Choice. There was something about their argument that had Tom running it through his head for the rest of his day picking apart the other’s points and wishing he would have fought back with different points and stronger words. 

     Tom had left Huck after checking to see if the swelling had gone down on his leg. Since it seemed to be emanating heat and a good couple of sizes to big, Tom predicted that there was still something lodged within the confines of his flesh that the surgeon had missed earlier that day.

    This lack of accuracy did not surprise Tom is the slightest. He was disappointed that he would have to come back and probably spend a good amount of his own personal time trying to remove a needle from a haystack, but he wasn’t surprised. With Price leading more battles than ever in his feverish attempt to claim all of Missouri for the good fight, more and more soldiers had been coming in and out of their hospital. Tom used hospital in the loose sense, because it was much less a medical facility and more of a hollowed out estate sitting in the center of a plantation that seemed to sink two inches every day into the fast approaching marsh. Marsh that did not help their cause for faster recovery periods.

    Tom had left Huck with the promise that he would return in the night, after he had made his way around and made sure no one else was going to die of some unchecked cause, and dig the rest of the shrapnel out himself. 

It was strange. Most of the time when something was found to be left inside men’s bodies by the carelessness of the surgeon general or the ineptitude of the nurses, they would insist that they would be just fine with it in there. They were more scared of the knife then they were of the gun. Huck was weird, well he was weird in many ways, but weird in the way that after their original verbal banter he seemed to just nod and go alone with whatever Tom said. It was the quickest patient overview he’d ever done. Almost as if he didn’t really care for hearing his vitals or recovery plan. Plan used in the loose sense, more of a sentence really, a paragraph on a good day. 

   So there Tom sits, tapping away, waiting for the clock on the mantle of the staff room to chime eleven so that he can go assist a patient and totally not prove to them how invalid their argument is that this war is pointless. If you don’t want to fight, then don’t. Why enlist if you are just going to make snarky comments the whole time any- 

The clock began to chime.

    Tom was up and out of his seat walking down the no longer vibrant halls of the mansion finding his way to Huck’s ward. He finds the man no problem, lying just like he left him at the end of the row, staring up at the ceiling. Tom goes to the small table separating the bed and the wall and pulls out from the drawer a the set of instruments he’ll need. 

    “Is it that time already?” Huck asks rolling his eyes at Tom and looking around, maybe to see if there would be anyone to witness his possible death.

    “I’m afraid so. You better pray to God now.” Tom told Huck sternly, pulling out a scalpel, tweezers, and the bottle that numbs pain. “Who knows if you’ll be walking away once I’m through with you.” He pulls up a stool next to the bed and peels back the bandage. 

    “Like I said. Not much of a God man.” Huck said, voice strained through his teeth. He should be, Tom thought.  He should thank God for the miracle that he can still hear after receiving a ton of gunpowder to the face. Tom had the duty of informing many soon to be veterans that no, their hearing would never return and that yes, they would be discharged (with honors, but what are honors to an empty stomach). 

     “So if you aren’t here because you have to be, obviously, and you aren’t here for God, how did you end up fighting for the Confederacy?” Tom asks cutting straight to the question that had been eating away at him for the past eight hours. “Why make that choice?” Huck looks like this question, one that is simply trying to get him to focus his energy elsewhere whilst Tom digs into his leg with metal knives, is something that he would rather take the knives for. 

    “Firstly, “ Huck says finally drawing his eyes away from his leg, “I said that war is a choice and by that by choosing war, it is the wrong choice.” Tom who should be concentrating soleing on the incision that he needs to be making, stops for a moment to think about that.

     “What do you mean?” Tom was never one to ask questions, always assuming whatever he thought first was right, because it usually was. But Huck’s rebuttal has him on the edge. 

    “I mean war gets nothing done but split up families and communities. Should you be lucky enough to have either you should cherish it.” Huck tells him. The words are easy and light, but still somehow wrapped with razor wire. Wrapped with razor wire and completely missing the point of this whole crusade. Before he responds, Tom takes the chance to channel his frustration into cutting open Huck’s leg. 

    “Well, some might say that the war is to protect those things.” He states. Now that the slice has been made all that’s left is to find the little bugger without causing any more damage. 

    “It’s to protect the idea of family. When you send your son off to die, that’s not cherishing him. When you  _ anyone  _ off away from their family, that’s not cherishing them. That’s only for the idea of family, the one that doesn’t even exist. I fight because I think this war needs to end, and by adding my voice I might stop that.” From the energy that Tom is directing to Huck’s words and away from his surgical procedure, Tom feels like they are having two separate conversations. Maybe the man smacked his head when the blast went off. 

     “I am not sure about that logic. Fighting to stop fighting? That seems a little counter productive. Besides, what's one voice in an ocean?” Tom does not think for too long on the fact that all wars are fought in order to bring about an end and an era of peace - whose peace, is what the fighting is for.

     “The sea is made out of single drops of water. Only together do they make something terrifying.” Tom is quiet after Huck says that. He draws fully away from his business and looks at him, eyebrows raised, and rendered speechless. “What about you?” Huck continues, as if he had said nothing more than the weather forecast.

    “What about me?” Tom snaps back engrossing himself with finding that damn piece of shrapnel so he can go have his impending crisis, alone. 

    “Don’t be like that. What about you? Why are you still out here doing something you obviously have no love or skill for... no offense.” Huck said gesturing to Tom’s hands that seem to have blood permanently dried under his fingernails and hair that now had to be tucked behind his ears because it had been ignored for so long, too many dying too fast to care about personal looks. 

    “Hey. I love scooping rotting flesh out of other people’s bodies. I am a valuable asset to this army.” Tom said, in a voice that he hoped even Huck could detect as sarcastic. He wasn’t sure how much social interaction this man got, but judging by his ability to throw himself into a social situation with the verbal equivalent of ‘fists out and ready to catch something’ he guessed Huck was well versed in the art. 

    “Do you really believe that?” Was Huck’s response. A response that made Tom’s insides eat themselves up a little bit inside. It was not the response he had wanted to such a flippant remark. The consiterate thing would be to laugh it off and then talk about the state of the economy or something else neither of them cared about. Not ask some existential crisis inducing thought provoking life question. Tom didn’t know if he actually believed that. How does one even tell what you actually believe? That’s what the general says and the general is always right, you know? Tom has always been important because all people are important. People and their individuality. That’s why he is here right? To make sure that people get to be people? 

    “If I didn’t then what would I have to believe in?” Tom decides to ask, bypassing the question and throwing the ball back into Huck’s court. Huck, never one to miss a goddamn beat responds,

    “Well, I don’t know. How about the truth? It’s one of the only things -”

Tom grabs the piece of shrapnel and pulls it out using a little bit more force than is technically necessary and Huck’s words are cut off in a gasp of pain. 

    “Does that hurt?” Tom asks, using his natural born southern charm to feign innocence. 

    “No. Actually, it feels like a summer's day.” Huck said glaring at Tom. “Yes. It hurts.” Tom receives a scrutinizing glare from the man on the bed. “Are you sure you’re medically trained? You didn’t just sneak in here to specifically torture me right?”

    “Calm down.” Tom says avoiding how accurate that statement was. There’s no fun in the joke if the other is aware of the punchline. “There is no need to be rude.” 

    “Rude?” Huck exclaims. “My blood is going out of my body. That is the opposite of what it is supposed to be doing.” He gestures to his leg, which is now releasing a steady stream of red down the side of his calf and pooling onto the white sheets - definitely staining them. Tom makes a mental note to go pick up some fresh ones after this and take these to laundry. 

    “And I will fix it! Unless you would like me to leave the metal shards in your body, I have to make some damage to get them out!” Tom was glad to leave behind the panic inducing topic of the past for much calmer waters. Even if those camer waters involved yelling at each other and possibly waking sleeping patients. He’d rather be argued with than questioned any day of the week. If he couldn’t yell at Huck it wasn’t a conversation worth having. 

    “Fine! But after you get it out, it’s going to be fine. Right?” Huck groans throwing his head back banging it against the headboard letting his frustration seep out through the iron rods. Tom takes this moment to look very sternly at Huck’s leg, as if he was actually deducing weather or not it would be fine. Everything was going just fine, but Huck didn’t have to know that.

    “I’m afraid we are going to have to cut it off.” Tom concludes, his face completely devoid of emotion and voice blank. Huck, ever knowing nothing about medicine, turn a sickly white. His brown eyes stand out shocked against his now stark skin. Tom, after basking in his fear for what he feels like long enough to constitute as revenge, breaks into a shit eating grin and laughs out, 

    “Nah. I’m joking. You are going to be fine.” Huck rocks forward and shoves Tom in the shoulder, hard, almost sending him onto the floor. His laughing is cut off as he has to save himself from face planting into the less than clean carpet. “Ow. Um? Don’t hurt the medic. I can’t patch myself up and you think I am going to trust any of my useless coworkers to do it?”

    “You deserved it and you know it. I think you have almost killed me more times than you’ve healed me today.” Huck leans forward and starts checking things off on his fingers. “First there was you and the un numbed stiching of my shoulder-” 

   “Stitches you ripped! And you said you didn’t want any!” Tom refutes cutting off Hucks list.

   “Like I was saying.” Huck continues, “There was the stitches, then there was the first attempt to check out my leg, now there is you ripping out pieces of my leg -”

   “Foreign pieces! Litteral shrapnel!” 

   “Now there is you lying, to my face, about the health of one of the only legs I have.” Huck finishes in a climactic conclusion of his faux fury. 

   “Well, we wouldn’t want you getting comfortable, now would we. Might mean you’ll want to leave or something.” Tom says pushing Huck back against the headboard of the bed, trying to get him back into a somewhat restful position. He enjoys these conversation - fights? Mild disagreements? He’d hate to go back to the monotonous gravel of pouring medicine into someone’s tapeworm infected leg, but that doesn’t mean he wants Huck to die of cardiac arrest. Huck seems to be silence for a moment and lets Tom push him back with ease, the fight leaving him somewhat. 

    “What do you mean by that?” Huck asks once he is sitting back properly and Tom has started to bandage his leg… again. 

    “Well. I just mean, that - you know. People have a better chance of going back out there,” he jerks his head to the window indicating the space outside the walls where people fight instead of heal, “when they are surrounded by those whom they like. So, lucky enough for you, there is none of that happening here. Gotta make sure there are some people here to look after and entertain me. Job security and all.” Tom says nonchalantly. 

    “Mmmmmmm.” Huck hums, mocking understanding. “Job security. Of course.” He smirks at Tom like he did that first time they met that morning. “Keeping soldiers back, sounds like traitorous thoughts to me.” Tom lets out a gasp of fake accusation, throwing a hand over his heart in mock hurt.

    “Why, nothing of the sorts! I am doing my duty to my country by keeping someone out of harm's way when needed and you just happen to be someone would love to sit on the sidelines Mr. War-is-not-the-answer.” Tom shoots back.

    “Is that why you are only obnoxious to me? To keep me from being out there.” Huck asks Tom, who does not enjoy being called out like this, but never misses a chance to make Huck pissed. 

    “Partly.” He responds, as cryptic as he can.

    “Partly?”

    “The other part is you’re the only one who puts up with my obnoxiousness.” Tom continues. He states this as if it is the answer to everything that has ever been taught in school; an automatic right answer that can be used for any occasion. “So it’s partly your fault.” 

    “My fault?” Huck looks at Tom in disbelief. It’s almost sad just how fast Tom can get under his skin. He always enjoys a good challenge. “How is you being annoying to me, my fault?

    “Your tolerance of my comportment had lead me to -”

    “Comportment?” Huck cuts him off, spitting the word back out like raw food. “What is that? A disease?”

    “Behavior, Huck, of my behavior.” Tom replies rolling his eyes. What are they teaching children in schools these days when they don’t know middle French dialect words? Although, given the state of the Union, in that there is no more unified union, students had more worries about guns than vocabulary. 

    “Well, at least you are self aware. That's the first redeeming quality I’ve seen from you.” Huck murmurs clearly pulling back into his apathetic state, once again on the offense. 

     “First? Then I guess you’re stuck with me until you see that I am full of redeeming qualities.” Tom lets out a smile again, feeling as if he won this battle, and begins to put the medical instruments away. 

Huck just groans and mutters, “I highly doubt it.”

    “I heard that.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i would like to thank my online hospitality and tourism class for being so easy so now i have a whole period to write up & up brand fanfic


	5. Day 16 October 1864

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Huck needs to move, and move quickly, if he is going to be of any use to the much loved resistance he left behind. As he finds himself in the presence of some of his supposed fellow soldiers, Huck thinks this mission is going to be harder than previously conceived to be.

    Huck knew he was screwed. He knew he was screwed and there was nothing he could do about it. The forty eight hour mark was fast approaching where he was supposed to be back in Glasgow square meeting with Sophia and right now he was laying in a bed, in the middle of who knows where, with a cut up shoulder and a stinging leg. 

    He had fallen asleep last night promising himself that as soon as he woke up in the morning he would figure out some sort of new plan from the burning and decaying remains of the old one - and shoulder on no matter what. The only problem was that morning meds and breakfast had come and gone and he was no closer to having any idea what to do than he did in the late hours of last night. He was failing - and he was doing so spectacularly. 

    First things first. He was going to have to get out of this bed. That was step one. Concentrate on step one. Don’t concentrate on the overwhelming sense of inadequacy of being apart of this high stakes mission. He threw back the sheet and swung his legs out and planted them firmly against the floor. The carpet was rough under his bare feet and as he pulled himself into the upright motion his head felt like it had been emptied of all of its contents. 

    This was going to be harder than he thought. 

    He pushed against the scrambling in his brain and made himself stand up and hold that position for what he felt was an amount of time that seemed to stretch on and close on infinity but never quite touch it. As he was doing so he noticed he wasn’t dressed in his uniform anymore - hadn’t been since he arrived - and briefly thought about how much waste they had gone through in order to obtain one only for him to have worn it for a couple of hours at most. Furthermore, the lack of a uniform would not help him convince anyone that he was a ranking member and should be entrusted with a weapon much less any form of intelligence. 

    He had noticed that nurses tended to stay away from this ward unless called upon and the assistants only showed their faces when it was time to inject medicine or take out stitches, which by Huck’s calculations should give him about two hours to look around before someone noticed he’d gone. All the other patients in his ward seemed to be suffer from injuries of the head variety and simply stared into the ceiling with blank looks, so he was confident they wouldn’t snitch. He was also confident that they wouldn’t miss a couple of their belongings as he snatched up a pair of boots that looked about his size from under the bed of the man across from him. 

   He laced them on the best he could, the wound in his shoulder stinging in pain but not blinding him. His leg however, seemed to almost blind him every time he put pressure on it. It was a terrible wound that had him sucking in air just to convince him that he was still alive every time he tried to walk. Huck however, was not raised a quitter (he was not raised at all but he skips over that part) and simply ran his fingers alongside the cool metal railing of the beds to find his way to the door.

   Once he was out of the room, he stood leaning against the door frame gazing out into yet more long hallways that he would have to walk down with vomit inducing pain shooting through the frame of his body. And for a second there, Huck Finn seriously debated if it was worth it. If fighting for what he believed in was worth self inflicted torture. Then he heard laughing. Not the laughing of sophisticated men, which was always high pitched and usually aimed at someone instead of with someone, but the deep and loud bellow of average men over something that someone had said, which can only mean one thing - soldiers. Soldiers who, by the sound of it, where of a relaxed nature and easily ready to talk to someone who wasn’t a doctor. 

  Huck, sucking it up and deciding if these men couldn’t get him the information he needed he would just chop off his leg because it has  _ got  _ to be less painful than this, walked forward towards the laugher and entered into a new room that seemed to have been, in another life, a small living area. There sat a group of about four or five men around a large wooden table playing a card game, or at least a game that involved cards. 

   Huck was just standing there in the doorway, awkwardly, once again on the fringes of a social interaction that he never knew how to approach, as had been the sad story of his life. Luckily for him, one of the men who was facing the door decided at that moment to look up and take notice of him.

   “Hello there! Glad to see someone else managed to get up and have a little bit of fun.” He said in a perfectly pleasant tone. “Why I swear, the boredom hurts almost as much as my arm.” He jested, holding up his arm which was left as a stump near the elbow. 

   “Want to join?” One of the smaller men, who was heavily bandaged around his head, asked. Huck, who took a couple of seconds to long to register that he was the one being addressed, muttered,

    “Oh. No thanks. I uh -,” he gestures to his head, “got hit a little too hard. Doctor told me not to think too much.” The small man looked like he was about to protest when a large man with an impressive mustache spoke up.

    “Isn’t that just like them?” He bellowed. “Those doctors are always thinking they know better than us. Just because they got some fancy piece of paper that says they know where my liver is.” Huck took the outburst as an opportunity to slink down into one of the unoccupied chairs at the table and simply watch the others interact. It was a tactic that he learned brought about much knowledge and had little remembrance factor. 

    “Robert! You need to count your damn blessings.” A man with deep and horrendous scarring running down his face chastised. He couldn’t have been any older than Huck but looked as if he had served in all the world’s wars combined. “At least you still got a chance of fighting. You could be dead in the streets with those Union men leaving your body to rot.”

    “They wouldn’t let your body rot in the streets. Would they?” Bandage head man asks putting down his cards and losing interest in the game. It was odd to Huck, to listen to these men talk. He had never before been in such intimate presence of any confederate soldiers. He had seen them on the streets, clad in their uniforms that seemed so say ‘keep away from me’. Listening to them now however, told Huck that he had not missed out on much. 

     “Oh yeah?” The man with the face carved up counters. “They left the rest of us down here to suffer under their rule. Now we have to see shell fire and hell fire and fight just to protect our own rights. That’s supposed to be their duty.” 

    “That’s right.” Moustache man, seconded. “All union men are scoundrels.” He says this loudly and with such assurance and conviction Huck has half a mind to speak up and give him a piece of his mind. But he remembers that there is more at stake here than a few petty words lost to the atmosphere and instead grinds his teeth together brutally.

    “Now hold on just a second.” The man with the stump for an arm who had welcomed Huck says. “My brother, a God blessed man as I have ever seen, went to fight for the Union. And he sure ain’t rotten.” 

    “Why would he do a thing like that?” Moustache man asks, absolutely aghast at listening to someone question his steel welded opinions. 

    “Robert don’t be daft. You know this is a border state, bless our souls.” Stump man begins telling his tale. “My family come from both sides. My Ma comes from Mississippi but my Pa comes from Michigan. My brother was living with his family when war broke up. Signed up with the Union a week before I joined the Confederacy. He’s the goodest man I ever met, but he got it in his head that owning another person corrupts the soul.” Huck has begun to think that this is a dead end conversation as the men seem to be more fascinated by debating the finer points of weather owning a person is bad for them - and not the one being owned - or any strategic points Huck could use to decipher military moves. 

     “Are you saying that we ain’t good men?” The man with the scar spits out.

     “That ain’t what I saying and you know it. That’s just what he said the church thinks, and apparently the church is never wrong.” Stump man refutes throwing his hands, or hand, up in defense. “Me? I mean, Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and no one would say he’s a corrupted man.” 

     “Yeah,” the man with the bandaged head pipes in, “I even heard that Mr. Jefferson don’t like slavery too much, but he said that it was just the way things worked. America had to develop somehow.” 

    “Exactly, and sometimes you have to do terrible things for your country in order to make it great.” Stump arm says picking up his cards with a surprising amount of ease. 

    “Like fighting in the war?” Bandage head questions.

    “Like fighting in the war.” Stump man echos back.

    Huck notices that scar face looks like he is going to say something else when suddenly another man enters to room. Quickly, five pairs of eyes are on the new man and he is staring back at them, looking like he is terribly lost in some deep back water wood. He’s a small boy, couldn’t be older than having just graduated school and younger than Huck even. He has a slight sheen to him, though weather it is from the weather or from the panic has yet to be disclosed.

    “I hate to bother y’all like this, since you probably have a great deal of healing to do.” He begins stumbling over his words in an embarrassingly number of places. “But would any of you happen to know where Captain McGee’s office would be. Or even better, his person?” The men then turn away from the boy and glance to each other to see who is going to bite the bullet and help this poor sod. Finally the stump man speaks up in the same kind voice,

    “His quarters are just down the hall, up the first flight of stairs, through the second door, and across the conjoining bridge. When you reach the garden entrance turn left and go down and turn by the statue head, if you run into the dining room you’ve gone too far.” 

    Huck can see the boy forgetting the last set of instructions as the next one comes. Then for the first time in a long while Huck speaks up having just conceived the first percentage of a good plan.

    “Why do you ask? Do you need to speak with him directly?” Huck  asks trying to remain neutral.

    “Not al all. I just have to deliver this letter to him. Supposed to be from General Price and everything.” He holds up a crumpled envelope. “Supposed to deliver it as soon as possible, but I’m Lt. General Sloan’s aide and I ain’t never seen this place so I’m well…. lost.” 

     “Well then.” Huck speaks up before any of the other men have a chance. “Why don’t you hand that over to me and I can take it to him, no problem. Then you can just go on back and tell Sloan that letter all safe and most importantly…. in the right place.” Huck adds on at the end, just to emphasize the boy has no idea what he's doing. Not that Huck does either, but he doesn’t need to know that. Judging by the look of relief that washes over the boy’s face Huck guessed that he isn’t to worried about handing his letter over to a complete stranger.

   “Would you? Thank you so much!” He thrusts the letter in Huck’s direction and then takes off, better things to do - clearly. 

   “You better get going mail boy. By the looks of that, it ain’t to be waiting.” Moustache man barks out, going back to the card game as if nothing had ever happened.

    Huck stands, this time the pain in his leg not sending out a signal of pain for some reason, and makes his way to the door with as little of his injury displaying as possible. He heads out into the hall and leans his back against the wall next to the doorway. When the noises from inside the room sound like the men have become fully engrossed with their game again, Huck tears open the envelope and begins to wander slowly down to his ward, reading it. 

 

_     Greetings, _

_     I apologise that I was not there personally to command during the battle yesterday, but as my aide tells it you had no problem receiving a decisive win for our cause. Only a couple more then this whole blasted thing shall be over. Since the victory at Glasgow has given us more ammunitions and men - the Army of Missouri is able to proceed as planned.  _

_     Gather the second infantry. I have six thousand of my own men marching now. I suspect that we shall encounter shermishes as we head west but we should reach the point in one weeks time. God bless your soul. _

  1. _P_



 

    Before Huck can make any more of the note he begins to feel something warm and sticky coating his leg. He looks down to see that his previously light pant leg has been darkened with the dark red color of his own blood. It stretches and smears down his calf and drips pathetically onto the carpet pooling around his stolen shoes. 

    Blood groups had yet to be discovered by Austrian doctor Karl Landsteiner, and thus blood transfusions were, as the kids say, not a thing. Therefore Huck Finn was attempting to walk around in the late Missouri summer heat put very present humidity after losing 15% of his blood the day before. Which, needless to say, was not a good idea.

But good ideas had never been Huck Finn’s fortey. 

    As a consequence of his actions, his vision started to blur, his eyes lost focus of the path in front of him, his heart started to pick up a dangerous rhythm in his chest, and then in a motion that seemed to catch him off guard, the floor rushed up to meet Huck Finn’s body as he fell like a dead soul onto the floor. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this instead of looking to see if i had gotten accepted or rejected from my dream college - here ya go - thoughts and prayers please


	6. 18 October 1864

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Huck and words are two things that never sat well together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the updates stopped because i left for washington dc… had to knife fight the cheeto…. snort rex tillerson’s dignity off paul ryan’s abs…. do cocaine with nikki haley… you know how it goes...haha just kidding i had to be an Adult™ and let me tell u it sucked…. but imma back and ready to rumble

    “I thought the whole defiant personality was just a way to maintain some sort of control over yourself while you heal… but it turns out that you are just - impeccably stupid.”  

    These are the words that Huck Finn woke up to. His head hurt and his leg ached with a raging pain and he wished he could escape back into the comforting and quiet darkness. He cracked his eyes open just enough to notice that he is once again back in his prison of a bed laying down, as he is facing the ceiling which he has looked at longer than probably any one person’s face. It was a nice ceiling. All it did was exist there, in its nice ceiling glory. Silently. And most importantly didn’t judge him like the someone who had been complaining, rather loudly he might add, for the better part of multiple hours, about having to drag Huck all of the thirty feet from where he fell at the doorway, back to his bed.

    “You are so lucky that I was the one to find you and not any of the other assistants because let me tell you,” Tom Sawyer, the current one complaining to Huck  _ about  _ Huck, rages, “they would have left you on that floor. What were you thinking? You just had surgery!” He pauses then from the hole in the floor that he was working on making via pacing in front of Huck’s bed back and forth for the past hour. It was the position that he had taken up as soon as Huck was conscious enough to make out sounds, which had been, to his estimate, a couple hours ago. He had been laying there silently hoping that if he just didn’t respond, Tom might go away. The tactic didn’t seem to be working.

   “Surgery means nothing.” Huck counters instead, finally finding the energy to talk. He would never admit it, not even going into his grave, but he had felt weaker now than he ever felt after suffering under the hands of his father, and that man could do some damage. “You took all of the bad parts out of me. That means what’s left is what was always there.” Tom stares at him after that, mouth slightly open and eyes wide, trying to figure out which part of the horrendously incorrect statement to attack first.

   “First of all, surgery is not nothing. We had a knife fight and you lost - because you were complicit.” Tom hisses pointing a finger at Huck. “Secondly, the ‘bad parts might be gone but so are several pints of your blood. Maybe more considering you’ve been out almost two days.” 

    Two days? Had Huck really lost that much time to the unconscious consequence of his actions? The war could have ended in two days, he could have been found a spy in two days, the entire union army could have collapsed in two days. But, given the static nature of the room - as it looks exactly as he left it - he guesses nothing of the sort has happened. Nothing major besides Sophia probably thinking he’s dead. Tom, per usual cuts through his internal stream of worry, “So, please tell me what was so important or that you are, in fact, just that stupid.” 

    “I thought I heard something strange.” Huck replied. He thought to himself that he wasn’t technically lying, because he did hear the strange laughing which had lead him to that strange conversation between the different men. He hoped none of them had seen his less than graceful descent to the ground. 

The letter.

It suddenly came into his thoughts and Huck’s full awareness of this plane of existence slammed into him so hard he almost passed out once more due to the increase of oxygen to his brain. Even though Huck was not a God fearing man, he prayed to whatever was out there in the universe that past him had managed to shove it in his pockets before his plummet. 

    “You thought you heard something?” Tom repeats. He does so slowly, as if each word off of his tongue is in a new language not yet spoken aloud to an audience. “The man thought he heard something.” He pinches the bridge of his nose and attempts to squeeze the thought out of his eyes.  “Are you kidding me? I know for a fact that you have been in…” As Tom descends into one of his mad rants about Huck needing to mind his injuries, Huck takes the opportunity to slide his hand down under the sheet and run it over his pockets, feeling for any sign that he did not leave a very important letter laying out in the middle of the hallway where anyone could find it - and more importantly, trace it back to him. His left one was bare, flat against his own body, and when he reached over to the other side, praying to feel the telltale signs of paper - he got nothing but fabric.

     Apparently, his past self was completely incompetent. Huck thought the man in front of him wouldn’t say otherwise as said man spits out,

    “Now try that again. What could possibly be so important that you that you had to risk your own well being to accomplish?” Tom throws his hands up then in utter disbelief. Several seconds of silence slide past them and Huck realizes that this is not a rhetorical questions. The crickets outside provide the only answer as they play their old and well worn tune. Huck decides to mold the truth once again, after all, the best lies are born from grains of honesty. 

    “I needed to find someone to write a letter for me.” Huck replied. Not  _ technically  _ a lie, you see, because now that his paper intel was MIA, Huck needed someone to write a letter now detailing what he knew. He had only bothered to memorize the address of Sophia’s residence before taking off and now that the physical manifestation of his information was gone - he was left with a predicament. 

    A predicament being that Huck, to lightly put it, had a deficit in written expression.

    “Write a letter?” Tom echoed, a thing he seemed to be doing more and more these days. “What’s wrong with your hand? You got shot in the left shoulder.” He paused his speech and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Tell me you aren’t one of those queer people who write with their left hand. That’s just messed up.” Huck rolls his eyes not wanting to come off as rude, but exasperated at the fact that  _ left handedness  _ is what Tom thinks of first.

    “No. I am not left handed.”

    “And you didn’t get hurt in the right arm?”

    “No. I did not get hurt in the right arm and if I did, which I did not,” Huck added hurriedly, “shouldn’t you know about it by now Mr. Doctor?” 

     “Surgeon’s assistant!” Tom shouted out. There was a groan of complaint from farther down Huck’s row. Judging by the lack of light streaming in from the windows, it must be well after acceptable social hours, and Huck could take a guess that the other patients were not appreciative of loud noises. “Surgeon’s assistant.” Tom whispered. “If your hand ain’t hurting, then what’s your problem?”

     “I just…” Huck struggled even now to explain it, “I can’t seem to get the words out of my brain and onto paper in a manner that other people understand.” He recalls his horrendous literary grades from the brief period he saw the inside of a classroom. He knew what he wanted it say, but when he wrote anything down - there seemed to be no words on the page at all.  

    “But you can talk to me just fine, in what manner does that change in writing?” Tom asked as he decided to take his usual seat on the empty bed next to Huck’s.

    “In the manner that I can’t seem to match my thoughts to the way they are supposed to be on the page. It just doesn’t work in my brain.” Huck hated this. He hated this more than he hated having to sit through a class where everyone else seemed to be able to match meaning to a random string of letters. It was painful then, and it certainly wasn’t a walk in the park now. When Huck slid his eyes over to look at Tom, to see if he had that same face of pity mixed with lethargic apathy stuck on his face - all Huck saw was a look of deep concentration. Then after a moment of somber pondering, Tom spoke, 

    “So in the sense that you suck at writing?” 

    “In the sense that I suck at writing, yes.” Huck sighed. He was somehow both grateful and disgusted at the way his education decadence could be summed up with such crass words. 

    “Well then,” Tom proclaimed standing up having clearly made some sort of decision that Huck would probably be on the receiving end of, “I’m going to tell you something that is going to blow your mind.” There was a pause, probably for some kind of dramatic flair. “I don’t suck at writing.” 

   “Wow. Thanks for that bit of information.” Huck said darkening the room with his look. 

   “I’m not finished. You never let me finish.” Tom complained. “Due to my ability not to suck at writing and due to my copious amounts of good nature, I am going to help you write whatever it is you need.”

And that right there, was almost worse for Huck than having to dredge up his own stagnant past. 

Almost. 

    “Oh, thank you.” Huck coughed out trying to shove out enough words that would warrant a decent rejection. “But, uh, this is kind of personal.” Huck decided that even Tom, in all of his devil may care attitude, wouldn’t be interested in the supposed more than tepid affair that he was penning. 

Huck, like in many things, was dead wrong.

    “Don’t worry about it. I help a lot of these poor souls write back to their lovesick sweethearts. Burly men gone all creampuff hearts at telling their wives they ain’t widows. Trust me, I can handle personal.” He glances around at a few of the other patients, making sure they are undead gone from this plane of consciousness. “I’m honestly surprised some of these folks can even still look at me after what I have had to write for them.” 

    “Not that kind of personal.” Huck clarifies, moving this conversation backwards as many steps as he naturally can. 

“If I was ever in that situation, I have to say that I would just struggle it out on my own. It’s to my uh...” Huck pauses making sure to remember all of this later when it, knowing his luck, will most certainly come back to haunt him. The worst part about lying, or as Huck so nobly defends it as ‘truth bending’ is all of the space it takes up in one's mind to keep all of the facts straight. “It is to my sister.” 

    “Sister? What do you need to tell your sister that could be so important, let alone personal?” Tom questioned, clearly not buying what Huck was so desperately trying to sell. 

    “Not personal in  _ that  _ way.” Huck says still trying to backtrack as fast as he possibly can. “In the… damn, what’s the word everybody uses these days? Confidential. That’s it.” Huck really hopes that’s it. “My letter is confidential.”

     “And you don’t trust me to keep a secret? I assure you, I’m better at it than most... maybe even you.” Tom throws at Huck. The accusation, Huck severely doubts. Tom might be keeping secrets but he’s not the one currently trying to get a Confederate agent to write a letter to an abolitionist spy. That beautifully gruesome task falls to Huck. 

    “I don’t know? Can you keep a secret?” Huck asks him, pasting on an expression of mock skepticism. “Why don’t you tell me one that you’ve been holding for someone else? Even the scales?”

    “But that my good friend,” Tom says smoothly, “would be against the point. Now wouldn’t it.”

Huck, for the first time since he entered the hospital, broke out into a genuine grin.

    “It would be - wouldn't it.” He says enjoying the company of someone, who might be, just as much of a con artist as he is. “Well, in that case I’m taking a leap of faith here.”

    “I’ve got very strong arms. I promise to catch you.” Tom replies with a grin like the edge of a knife. Then for a reason Huck’s not quite sure he understands, Tom pushes Hucks legs over and sits down on the edge of his own bed. In the new proximity, the moon lights up Tom’s face just enough that Huck can make out the ghosting of freckles that are thrown across his cheeks. He didn’t notice his eyes were green. And Huck’s brain has the audacity to supply him with the thought that Tom is beautiful to look at. 

     “What did you say your sister’s name was?” Tom asks turning away quickly and slamming the tone of the conversation brutally back on its tracks. 

     “Sophia.” Huck coughs out - realizing too late that he should have given Sophia some sense of anonymity and not sold out her title to a member of the opposite side. “She’s one of the secretaries for one of the Colonels under General Price.” That seemed like a reasonable position right? War secretaries where high in demand after the aide to camps all went onto more trying and adrenaline-inducing tasks, such as being shot at by the real life Sophia and her followers. 

      “Alright. That should be easy enough to get to her in no time at all.” Tom says moving his eyes about to room to help pull out a memory. “I think some men from here are actually heading down to meet him for some major convergence. Poor blue boys will be over run.” 

     And there it was. The disgusting reality that Huck had chosen to so easily forget. That his situation was not one of mutual comradery but of precise deception and manipulation. That the longer he lay in this bed the longer he molded himself into everyone that he despised. That he needed to get out of here, and he needed to do it before the feeling inside of his stomach started to take form and needed addressing with a name of its own.

    “The convergence, will most certainly bring about something that’s for sure.” Huck agrees completely throwing darts into the darkness and hoping one of them sticks. “It’s been of great conversation between the Colonel and his men. I heard a great deal of it, being in charge of communications between their garrison and ours.” 

    “You a communications officer,” Tom interjects, eyebrows raised, “and you can’t write?.” 

    “We are not here to discuss my flaws as an individual. I made just fine before delivering things other people wrote Huck replies, trying to avoid the topic, still not able to bring himself to straight up lying. “I was supposed to relay some information to them about our movements. Very important they receive is as soon as possible.” Huck made the mental note to remember that he was ‘something close to a communications officers’ if the topic ever arose again. He wasn’t sure what they did, but as in most of his life, he would figure that out when he got there. 

    “Why don’t you have the aide to camps write this then?” Tom questions and Huck debates weather or not he is deliberately trying to cross examine Huck’s fool’s gold story in order to see him squirm. But that would have the connotation that Tom  _ knew  _ and that… Well, Huck wasn’t going to think about  _ that.  _ “I mean, I’m not trying to back out, believe me, just if you know, you can’t…” Tom trails off, leaving Huck to fill in the blanks. 

    “I told them I could handle it because I didn’t want to worry them.” Huck says, exasperated at this entire situation. “All I said was that I would get it done but-”

    “But you forgot that you can’t write.” Tom says in a flat tone. “And now you have to, oh yeah, write a letter.”

    “Listen,” Huck snaps and Tom visibly flinches back, but Huck continues on, “you offered to help so are you going to sit here and judge whether or not this letter was important enough that I would get out of bed, or are you going to actually be of any assistance.”

    “Okay, whatever. Let’s just get his done so I can go get some sleep before having to wake up at a time no one should ever have to in order to shove some medicine down some throats.” Tom replies, in a quieter voice than usual. He stands and starts digging through the drawer and pulling out a writing utensil and a piece of paper.  

    “Wait… you mean you’re actually going to help me with this?” Huck asks. Not quite sure if this is actually happening. If he actually managed to sell that dying and decayed up mess of a story to someone as intelligent and Tom. 

    “Sure. Why not? It’s either this or letting you bleed all over the carpet in search of someone who has the same ability as me. Plus it’s too late for anyone to be up anyway.”

     “What time is it?” Huck asks, stalling for some more time to figure out how he wants to attack this. Anyone else, Huck assumes he could just repeat what he remembers from the letter. But Tom is not anyone else, and actually seems to have the ability to critically think. Well, as much as someone who is fighting for the expansion of oppression and slaughter of people can analytically process their environment. 

   “Too damn late. Stop stalling.” Tom responses, not even looking up from where he is scratching out a header. 

This is going to be just as hard as Huck did not want it to be. 

    “Fine. Don’t go loading your gun. All it’s got to say is that six thousand men are marching west as planned and they will converge with the General’s army as planned.”  _ Please don’t ask any other questions. Please don’t ask any other questions. Please don’t ask any other questions. _

    “How do you want me to address them?” Tom questions. 

    “You should know what is customary.”

    “And the format?”

    “Whatever you think is the best.”

    “And to close?’

    “With the formal tense.” 

Tom scratches away for a minute, letting the graphite hit the paper in a symphony of tiny little strokes that Huck has never been able to play. He gets down to what Huck assumes is the end and looks at the paper for a few seconds.

   “Is that it?” Tom asks, showing him the paper. “A single sentence? Do you want to say something about how you aren’t dead and all. I mean she’s your sister…”

   “Well, I’m writing her so I’m obviously not dead. What do I look like? Thoreau? Just send the damn thing.” Huck tells Tom throwing his head back and wondering if one can snap their own neck if done with enough force.  

    “Fine. Fine.” Tom mumbles folding the paper into thirds and securing it with a small piece of sticky bandage. “You’re more of a Witman anyway.” He mutters under his breath. Huck just rolls his eyes. “Where do you want me to send this?” Huck rattle off the address he had stored away in the safest part of his brain for the duration of this misshapen journey. Tom jots it down and then tucks it into his pocket, making Huck realize that he will never actually know if it will get sent. He stares at the outline of the paper and thinks that this feeling of codependency might be his least favourite feeling ever. It certainly makes the top three, and sits there right along side ostracization. 

He almost laughs at the irony. He can’t escape the feeling to need others nor the feeling to sit on the fringes of them. 

     “Great.” Tom says. “I will just have to find wherever we keep the outwards mail and this will be out with the soldiers in the morning.” 

     “I thought you helped out people all the time.” Huck asks, trying to fall in step. “Shouldn’t that be an old point of reference by now?” This comment caused something to happen that Huck could not have predicted even if he was given a hundred years to dissect the situation. Tom suddenly stops his constant movement and just stares at him for a second, unblinkingly, trying to pull something from Huck, and it makes him squirm.

   “Wow.” He finally says. “Apparently it does  _ not  _ take one to know one.” 

   “Excuse me?” Huck snaps, not sure what Tom is saying, but not one to be spoken to like some sort of invalid. 

   “From one liar to another,” Tom clarifies and Huck knows that if Tom says one more word he is going to vomit, “I figured sacrificing a couple more hours of my sleep is better than you up and wandering again as soon as I leave.”  

    “I wouldn’t-” Huck starts to refute him, using the force that has built up inside him that would otherwise be used for projectile vomiting to somehow prove Tom wrong.

    “Just. Don’t.” Tom replies throwing up his hand to aid in silencing Huck. “Just next time,” Tom says, insinuating that there will be a next time at all, “you feel the need to write to your so called sister, just ask. I don’t pretend to understand how this army works but I know how the human body does. So, please, do not get up and wander around. I will be the one who gets in trouble if I- we, lose you.” He sets his hand down onto the form of Huck’s legs beneath the cotton white sheet. He hesitates so much that Huck almost doesn't register the contact at all. “Just. Promise me. Please.” Huck can’t concentrate on the words coming out of Tom’s mouth because his entire body’s energy is needed just to comprehend and process what is going on right now. What is going on  _ inside  _ of Huck right now.

     “Fine. I mean, yeah I promise.” Huck says, ever the eloquent one, feeling like he’s promising to the unseen ocean under an iceberg. That there are things that swim between them no one has yet seen or named. Things that should stay in the dark because somethings are too terrifying to see light.   

    “Alright.” Tom says coming out a little bit too loudly. He pulls his hand way, as the moment he had created was also his to do away with as he pleased. “Good to know I am still in the lead for winning arguments.” 

    “Are you keeping score now?” Huck asks, thinking he will need to step it up if there is scorekeeping involved. “I’ll have to try harder.”

    “Oh you went down plenty hard when you passed out. Any larger a loss and I might not be able to bring you back.” Tom mentions. 

    “Ha. Ha.” Huck says, clearly not amused. “Send that one to the papers, you can get a nickel for each joke.”

    “I’ll let you win the next one, how about that?” Tom asks sticking out his hand for shaking. Huck isn’t sure if the proposition from Tom should be taken as an offense or as a gesture of goodwill. Huck, who has already made more promises tonight than this whole year combined figures one more wouldn’t kill him. He sticks out his hand, the one that has held pamphlets of freedom and newborn black children and the throats of grey-uniformed men who tried to kill both and grasps Tom’s hand, whose history is hidden to Huck, and shakes it. 

    Tom smiles, raps his knuckles twice on the bed frame, and with nothing more to say, leaves with a wave over his shoulder. Huck stares at the doorway which he exited long past the time of that which is considered socially acceptable, but Huck has never been socially acceptable and is he knows he is not about to start now, because the feeling in Huck’s stomach, the vomit inducing one that he has starved down his entire life, demands to be felt. 

It demands to be felt in the presence of Tom Sawyer. 

Tom Sawyer the Confederate surgeon. 


	7. 19 October 1864 - 1:24pm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People shouldn't own people, Confederate surgeon's shouldn't make him laugh, lost boys should only be read about in novels, and other obvious truths Huck tells himself.

    Huck should just get used to being woken up by loud sounds. Usually talking. Usually by one Tom Sawyer. Huck had taken to using the daylight hours to get some rest because apparently his nights had been scheduled to be taken up with whatever the daily challenge was that had to be dealt with. Huck swore he had been more productive bedridden these past days, only getting up to use the lavatory and pace a few lengths of the hallway before coming and collapsing into the land of the sleep for a good eight hours, than he had been working thirteen hours a day.

   Which is why he assumes that he can adjust getting used to being awoken, suddenly and without his consent, much quicker than it would take for said awakenings to stop happening. Time number, what is it? Four? Five? Huck’s lost count at this point, begins with Tom Sawyer rushing into the room full of unconscious patients (one not unconscious anymore) and just starts... opening and closing drawers.

   He moves about the room in an unchartable fashion doing just that, opening and closing drawers, moving things around on the table, smoothing the sheets of the unmovable people’s bed, making them more inhospitable than they already are. His body is taught with such emergency that Huck just sits up and stares in utter confusion, wondering if he should be panicking as well. There is a noise beyond the door, the sound of heavy footsteps which inflicts in Tom the reaction of grabbing the nearest stack of papers and starting somewhere in the middle of a conversation he’s never had with Huck,

    “So your femoral popliteal artery has been severed and we will have to schedule you for surgery I am afraid. How about sometime Tuesday?” Huck blinks unsure if he has woken in the right universe or not.

    “What are you talking about?” He whispers, not sure if he is actual expected to know what the hell a femoral popliteal artery is. He doesn’t even know what one of those words mean by itself, let alone together.

     “Just answer me.” Tom hisses under his breath, and then takes the conversation to more confusing heights - if possible. “And your rotator cuff seems to be healing in an exponential fashion. I can take a look at it this evening if its bothering you?”

Huck blinks at him.

    “Will that be alright?” Tom asks him in a voice that indicates he needs to answer.

    “Are you speaking English?” Huck questions, just making sure that they are still speaking in English right now.

Tom’s face then conforms into something that tells Huck he is currently wishing Huck died in the explosion that brought him here. He eyes jerk over to the right, which of course sends Huck looking over there to see what the hell is going on.

    And he notices a man. Maybe man is too liberal of a word in this case. This looks like somebody who crawled out of the womb right after Moses freed the Jews. This is an ancient being, a holy deity, a force to be reckoned with.

Huck looks back to the man in front of him. Tom Sawyer, someone no older than he is, struggling to understand God at all and tragically human, and Huck understands him better than anyone else - because he can tell Tom Sawyer is currently pretending to be something he’s not. Trying to be something he will never be for the man with the beard and the all seeing eyes from the back of the room. Tom Sawyer is straight up lying.

    “I am sorry to hear that my healing has lost potential.” Huck coughs out, having the feeling that they are both taking on the man, giving him the scene he wants to see. However, Tom now looks like he wishes he himself would have died in the explosion. Maybe that would have been less painful than disappointing a god.

    “Quite the opposite!” Tom says, still too loudly to be considered casual. “You should be doing just fine. After the-”

    “Sawyer!” The man with the beard calls and Huck sees the fear of God enter into Tom Sawyer’s eyes. He covers it well, all things considered, and rather quickly as well. Maybe even faster than Huck would have been able to if a holy being called forth your name.

    “Hello there Surgeon General Capis. How might I help you?” And there it is. The truth behind the mysterious all knowing figure cutting its way into Tom and Huck’s space, refusing to lurk on the sidelines like a respectable god would.

   “What were you doing this morning? Around ten o’clock?” Capis asks, apparently not one for pleasantries. In any other instance Huck would have applauded the man for his lack of respect for societies dumb rules, but given the current situation… it just seemed like a bad idea.

    “Medicine. D Hall. I switched rotations with David.” Tom answered at once, seeming more like a soldier than any of the men in this room who where, you know, actual soldiers.

     “That’s awfully generous of someone like you.” Capris says. It’s cold and unfeeling which puts Huck on an uncomfortable ledge. “You’re hate of medicine is not a secret you hide well.”

     “Well, surely I’ve hidden it better than that. There are better hidden secrets after all.” He glances to Huck as he says this, just for a moment, but Huck still sees it. He still sees it and it causes his lungs to fill with glue.

     “Yes. Maybe there are.” Capris retorts. The glue in his lungs coats his throat and makes every breath stick there on its way out. It’s rough and it’s uncomfortable and Huck wishes he were not confined to this bed.

    “Pardon me?” Tom chokes out, seeming to have as difficult a time with his ability to speak and breathe as Huck is.

    “You wouldn’t have happened to be in the operating wing as of late, would you?” Capris asks, doing that thing Huck hates. The thing where someone wants to scream at you but have to build up to it for some reason, so they make you drag out the exposition because if they had to their would be no more energy for yelling.

    “Oh. No sir.” Tom replies with such confidence that Huck almost forgets that they are in on a con together. “Not since last week. Nothing much happening in the way of injuries.” Tom laughs out, trying so desperately to bright some light into the situation. His attempt is saturated with the way the Surgeon General stares at him in barely contained fury.

     “Not that much happening in the way of progress, you mean. No injuries mean no battles. No battles mean no victories.” The man says this as if correcting Tom’s grammar. “Negative progress in fact. There seems to have been a…” he paused to choose his word, “sudden unauthorized discharge in the surgery wing.”

Well, if that wasn’t the most pageantry set of words that Huck has ever heard.

     “What?” Tom gasps, turning his knuckles white as he clutches the stack of papers that probably read nothing but gibberish and only make sense to those with fancy pieces of paper signed by the god like man would understand.

     “Sometime between nine and eleven o’clock this morning.” He states.  

    “That was after my shift there.” Tom spits out, not thinking clearly about what he is saying and Huck winces with sympathy pains.

     “I thought you haven’t had a shift since last week?” The man asks, somehow asserting his control over the room with the single sentence. Huck turns his attention back to Tom, his brain suddenly comparing the conversation to some high stakes tennis game. Not that he’s ever played tennis, but one hears of such things in mockery of the elite, and Huck has always been a fan of that.

     “Exactly, last week was before the disappearance - therefore after my shift.” Tom explains, as if it was obvious, as if it were basic, and Huck is honestly impressed. The amount of utter confidence it takes to look God in the eyes and walk backward out of Heaven is ridiculous, and apparently Tom Sawyer possess it.

     Huck can sense the General’s words before they are even out of his mouth. He can hear the reprimands and the sharp cuts made with consonants and heavy fist of vowels. “Now see here-”, it begins, and already that is too much for Huck.

     “Did you operate on him?” Huck finds himself asking before he can even supply his mouth with the words he wants to say. The god turns to him then, moving his unknowing power to focus onto Huck, probably completely unaware of his existence until that second.

   “Why of course.” He answers sharply.

   “Was he in any pain at the time of operation?” Huck continues, not quite sure where he wants to take this - but he has a feeling in his mind it will lead him where he wants.

    “Of course not.” The surgeon scoffs, clearly losing attention on Huck for such a stupid question. “It would have been unbearable.”

    “So you are saying that the man was either in unbearable amounts of pain and you didn’t notice, or you drugged a man so heavily he lost touch with reality and fled?” Huck spoke carefully taking the time to emulate the same tone and cadence that the man had used on them. It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t an excuse. It was a statement that just so happened to have a question mark at the end.

It was quiet then for a moment. Huck looked at the god like man, afraid to look away should he be vanquished with a blink of an eye. The Surgeon General looked to Tom, wishing he could vanquish him with a blink of an eye. Tom looked to Huck, as if he had seen God for the first time.

     The Surgeon General recovered first, probably had better things to do, and stuttered out, “That is of no matter. This man’s dissa- his unmonitored removal would have been seen by the staff member present. It would have been impossible not to, if they were present that is.”

    “Well, I am sorry I wasn’t there. I would have stopped him.” Tom says, not sorry in the _slightest_. His face has broken out in a smile and it appears he does not even care and he will not stop looking at huck and it’s starting to freak him out.  

    “The thing is, the other patients describe someone quite like you helping them this morning.” The man bleats out, his power falling to the ground around his feet.

    “That is strange.” Huck says. It comes out too quickly for his mouth and sounds like an untuned symphony but just to damn excited to make his next move.

    “What do you mean?” The bearded doctor asks.

    “That there would be someone who looked so like Sawyer.” Huck continues, a smile cracking across his face. Even though this was the most excitement, and dare he say fun, Huck has had in the past who knows how long, there was still something inside of him that reserved the right to refrain from outright lying again. As he knew all too well, once he started that it turned from good to bad to ugly and like anything ugly - caused women and children to scream. He never saw Tom any time other than the unbearable hours of the night and nothing could be spun or bended otherwise.

    Huck wished he could say that the next words to come out of his mouth did so without his knowledge. That his body took over in some flight or fight response and those syllables where the sword he just so happened to wield. But Huck knew, knew better than most, that wasn’t true.

You make the bed you lay in - and if you sleep with the devil, well, that’s really your own problem isn’t it?

    “He was here. Helping me. I broke my, _god what was it_ \- rotisserie cuff.” Huck straight up lied.

    “Rotary cuff sir.” Tom butted in. “He tore it sir. Less than a week ago and it hasn’t been healing straight.” Apparently, there wasn’t a lot about him that was on the straight and narrow - even his body was bent out of shape.

    “Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” The Surgeon General barked, to Huck, not Tom, shifting the front of the battle.

    “Slipped my mind.” Huck said cheekily, falling back far more easily than expected into old habits.

    “Don’t let it happen again.” The fallen god of a man said. It was a threat, no doubt about it, but Huck was a godless man and it didn’t even touch his skin.

    “Oh, I’m sure it won’t.” He replied. Maybe he’s taking too much pride in defeating an all powerful being, because he could see the shift in the man’s face as something unpleasant came into his mind. The lines in his face dropped and smoothed out, creating an eerily still surface.

    “Well then, we’ve better start getting you to walk sometime soon so, I will schedule you for a physical treatment appointment tomorrow.” The man replies smoothly, scratching away at a piece of paper.

    “Oh that won’t-” Huck started to say.

    “Would be wonderful.” Tom finishes.

    The man takes one more look at Tom and huffs. He finishes his writing and then slams the piece of paper into Tom’s chest and whispers in a voice that Huck almost cannot hear,

    “You better be ready.” As if he is talking about something entirely out of the conversation that Huck has seen unfold. Then he returns to normal, “The victory today left many of our men wounded. They should be arriving any moment and we will need all the empty beds and help we can get.”

    “I understand sir.” Tom murmurs understanding the conversation happening on a plane above Huck's head. The beard man leaves then without another word seemingly passing out of the room as quickly and unawaring as he had entered it. Tom looks after him, past the point where he disappears beyond the door line.

    “Victory?” Huck asks, taking his chances that he might get more detailed answers while Tom is not fully concentrated on the conversation at hand and more so figuring out how the hell he is not dead or seriously maimed.

    “Yeah, Price was pretty successful at leading the men west.” Tom said, voice distant from his consciousness. Huck took another gamble. He wasn’t sure how far west Price would be at this time, and any Confederate would, but if he was a General of a dying army there was once place he might march.

     “What do they want with Kansas City?” Huck asked. More framing his question around the K in Kansas and Y in City than the entire sentence itself. “It’s not even the capitol?” Tom suddenly bringing his head back from where it had been vacationing drops into his usual self says,

   “What? Did you hit your head that hard in the blast? Jefferson City might be the capitol but Kansas City’s where the power is.”

    Kansas City. That’s where they were going. That's what the letter meant. God, Huck was so stupid! Of course, that's where Price would go. He could almost hear Sophia yelling at him in his ear. _Think about the long game Huck._ He wished she’d been born a male, then maybe she’d be here instead of him and the war would already be over. If you got Kansas City you had control of almost everything that went into Kansas. You could kill two Union states with one battle. The Confederacy didn’t need to win, they just needed to overwhelm the city for a long enough period of time. There isn't one person who if you throw enough punches won't fall down at one point. Huck’s sure of that. Not. One. Person.

He needed to tell someone. He needed to tell someone _now._

He remembered the Surgeon General's words about victory and it seemed he did not have long to do so.

    “Okay spill.” Tom says dropping Huck’s heart rate a few beats. It had been steadily climbing into a speed uncharted to mankind.

    “What?” Huck asks, genuinely confused.

    “Why’d ya do that.” Tom asks. He’s sitting on Huck’s bed now, eye level with him, arms crossed and Huck wonders just how long he was panicking for.

    “Do what?” He repeats. _Have an isolated emotional breakdown? Is that what you are talking about? If so we might be here for a while._

     “Do you want me to spell it out for you?” Tom asks nodding towards the door.

Oh God, that's right. He just lied in order to protect a Confederate surgeon from the consequences of being an idiot. The crisis’s are coming so quickly now he doesn’t have time to finish one before another begins.

     “You ARE bad at playing along.” Huck replied, hoping the artificial smirk would mask any reminisce of his prior imminent demise. “Good thing I’m not.” Tom rolls his eyes so far back into his head its a minor miracle they appear again. He throws his hands up and gasps out,

      “This is what I don’t understand. Your words and your actions are so polar opposite one might was well be fighting for the Union and the other Confederacy.” Huck was a little taken aback at how Tom managed to be so close to the truth. He’s always just adjacent from everything that is hidden from him, that if he only turned his head sideways he would see that all in front of him was fake - and yet his head remained stiffly forward.

     “Alright.” Huck declared. He’d come to the conclusion that if he was going to spend any more time in this blasted hospital he was going to start understanding those around him, so that when the time came (the time to flee or the time to fight, he’s not sure which) he might know what words would turn them away from guessing the traitor had been him.

     “I want to make a deal.” He bargains. “I will tell you why I lied on your behalf - if you tell me how you lost an entire person.”

Tom, completely and without reserve, is taken aback by this casual and completely undramatic accusation of his lack of medical credentials struggles to get something out,

    “No. Look. What? I mean-” Huck raises his hand to silence the man in a mock of the memory of Tom doing the same thing once, a day ago - a week ago? Huck has lost track of time. It slid past him when he used to look and count every second meticulously.

     Then Tom sighed. One of those purposeful signs to expel everything you hate from your body. He throws his head into his hands and carts a hand through his ever tangled auburn hair. It’s not as long as Huck’s but he still must tuck it behind his ears in order to maintain the illusion of being a professional. It falls in front of his face now and whips around as Tom turns suddenly and says,

    “Okay fine. He started running and I do NOT get paid enough to chase a man through a swamp in this heat.” He keeps his gaze locked onto Huck moving between eyes waiting for him to validate him in his actions. He’s looking to Huck now for relief and Huck - Huck didn't know how to give it to him. He found it made no sense that he went from lying _to_ Tom Sawyer to lying _with_ Tom Sawyer. 

   So he just laughs, because that’s how you talk about situations sometimes. With all the things unsaid and sometimes those speak loudest of all. But what speaks loudest, what deafens Huck's senses and runs over his skin marking him forever, is that Tom laughs back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cons: i did not get this out on time sorry dudes i have no good excuse  
> pros: i think i found possible college roommate which means guess what !!!! i got accepted !!!!!!  
> moral: ya win some ya lose some


	8. 19 October 1864 - 11:48 pm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is it really too hard to ask for one night of uninterrupted time to have a personal crisis? Is it? Really?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this scene relies on the unrealistic robustness of the united states postal service during the 1800s. BUT i now know WAY more about the civil war trans-mississippi theatre than i ever wanted to - because its about to get real historical up in here.

     The worst part about lying awake at night in a silent medical ward while your body slowly stiched itself back together was that you were presented with copious amounts of time to think. Like hours worth of time. In Huck’s case, hours worth of deafening silence to contemplate how much of a disaster his life has managed to become in the past couple of days. 

Let’s recap. 

    He got shot, or technically impaled, multiple times with shrapnel. His shoulder, leg, and given there has been a constant stinging sensation above his left eyebrow, probably his head as well, got cut open - then stitched back together - then he ripped those stitched out. Found a letter. Lost a letter (which he still needed to worry about someone finding and asking him about but  _ damn  _ he’s just too tired to care). He’s passed out on the floor for what he estimated is the twenty fourth time in his life and almost died for the thirty sixth. And then proceeded to lie for the first time in years for a man he’s only know for  _ four days.  _

     Four days. Ninety six hours. Five thousand seven hundred and sixty minutes. In any normal situation, you know one that requires anything to make sense, he would be deciding whether or not to divulge his last name, not becoming  _ literal  _ partners in crime. That felt like it meant something. Something that Huck wasn’t sure he liked. 

    So that’s what he is turning over, and over, and over, inside his head long after the sun has said goodbye to the horizon. It’s what he has scheduled to turn over for the next say, three hours, until his body physically rendered him unconscious but unfortunately, his schedule was rudely interrupted when a noise, that would have better been fit in a horror performance, erupted from the hallway.

    Huck’s eyes opened, but he did not move because as all rational children are taught, when there is a weird noise you  _ do not walk towards it. _

    But then it happened again. And Huck debated weather it was worth it to risk getting out of bed and possibly soaking his pants with blood by walking. 

    The third time it occurred was much like the first, only later, and convinces Huck that if he was going to die he was NOT going to die in this god forsaken bed. Literally anywhere else would be better than having his last moment touching those god  _ awful  _ sheets. 

    He swings his legs out and stands up, a motion that is tragically rare and only reserved to walk the six feet to the door of the bathroom. As his leg makes contact with the ground, and his body weight makes contact with his leg he feels the familiar pain that induced in him the sensation of vomiting up every single one of his organs. But the pain clears something away in his mind, the cotton that had been growing was blown away at the sensation of feeling  _ something.  _ The ability to feel pain was at least a change from the every constant wave of  _ nothing  _ Huck had to sit through day in and day out. 

    He puts more pressure on it, telling himself it’s to make sure he can actually walk, and shoves the fact that it's actually to make sure he’s still alive right now and not in some warped version of hell, so far back into his mind that it becomes automatic roomates with all of the other repression he’s built up. He’s got to give Sawyer credit though, those stitches sure know how to take a beating and still hold up. 

    His journey out into the hall is less than graceful, probably the farthest thing from it if he’s being exact, and the hallway, while being the only other part of this, what he assumes to be, sprawling mansion, he has seen is still unknown to him. The last time he’d been out here there was sunlight streaming in through the open windows. Now there is only the sickly moonlight and a single pair of candle at the end of the hall. He remembers the first door to be the area where the men had played their game of cards and the one on the left to be some sort of storage, according to a young nurse. But the third one, the one on the right, was completely unknown to him.

   And the door to it was standing ajar. 

He stalks over, muffling his pain by grinding his teeth, and slips in. There is just enough light in the room that he can make out that this is some sort of kitchen area. There are bags of who knows what lining the counter but more importantly, there are knives left out on cutting boards. He grabs one, not sure if he can even use it in this state, with his shoulder taking a break from functioning, but the assailant doesn’t have to know that. 

   All is quiet. All is still. Then, suddenly, something moves. Something moves towards  _ him.  _

   “Judas Priest. Huck? Is that you?” The voice asks.

   “Who the fuck is asking?” 

   “Huck. It’s me. David.” This all came out very fast for Huck who was running on no hours of sleep. He just stood there and swayed trying to process if he knew a David despite the fact that David obviously seemed to know Huck. 

   “David?” Huck asked, more for himself than a question for others. 

   “David. Sophia’s husband?” The man repeated. “She sent me here. God, she said you died then, then you were alive and here you are! Actually alive! She sent me to tell you what's happening - it's quite urgent.” Huck needed this man to stop talking, because if he kept talking that loud someone was going to notice.

    “Listen, please quiet it down. Unless you would actually care to have the entire medical facility aware of… well… whatever is going on here.” He finished lamely. “What is going on?”

    “Listen, there is some urgent news that we need to tell you.” And David repeating the word urgent for what must have been the third time suddenly awakens Huck to the fact that he actually needs to tell someone about the fact the Confederacy might actually have a possibility of winning this war.

   “Wait hold on.” Huck cuts him off. “Listen, speaking of that. I learned that Price is going to Kansas City in order to-”

   “Yes. We know.” David interrupts.

   “You know?” Huck asks, completely startled. 

   “Yes! That’s why it’s urgent!” David explains, his voice steadily growing louder.

    “It can not be that urgent if y’all have left me here.” Huck whispers out angrily. It's not that Huck isn’t used to getting left behind in the pursuit of something better… just you know… he works for the good people now. 

    “But it is!” David exclaims and Huck has to shush him for the fourth time. “Sorry. But it is which is why we were so glad we got word from you when we did. There are much larger things coming.” David continues eerily quiet.

    “Larger? There is literally an entire army marching to demolish Kansas City! What could be bigger than that?”  Huck wishes that this conversation could have taken place in daylight hours. Because right now Huck is having to dedicate too much energy to his brain’s processing power so his body is slowly but surely failing. 

    “It’s not just about winning the battle Huck. You know that. We have to win the war.” David argues. 

    “And stopping Price will do that. Won’t it?” Huck asks not really sure why he is deciding to get into a debate on the art of war at god know what o’clock while three breaths short of passing out again. 

    “No. Stopping Price will save Missouri. We have to save the Union.” David continues, feeling like he is regurgitating something someone once told him. Either that or he is just naturally this cryptid. 

    “And how is that different? Save Missouri - Save the Union. Once it falls it won’t take long for the other to, you know that.” It’s what General Curtis had been telling them over and over. If you go back through history and look at each war, victories were like dominoes just waiting to be pushed over. All you had to do was find the one in front. 

    “Listen. You look like you are about to fall over.” David said finally catching on that Huck had been involved in a critical explosion not even a week prior. “Put the knife down. Let me catch you up. You've always been someone to understand this cause. You've missed a lot.” He then gestures to what appear in the dark to be a set of chairs around some old table. 

   “I've been gone for four days.” Huck says but never the less throwing down the knife he kind of forgot he was even grasping and falling into one of the kitchen chairs. 

   “A lot can happen in four days.” David says taking a seat on the other side. He can only see David by the light if the moon and it casts an ominous shadow across his face. He can finally get a look at the man’s features and recognizes him where he couldn’t by voice alone. Huck thinks he remembers stealing something from some battalion with this man. 

   “Apparently. Get on with it.” Huck spits out. The pain is stealing his compassion and making a dramatic appearance in Huck’s nervous system and he starts begging whatever created the universe he does not start bleeding. There are many wraths he’s had to face and Tom Sawyer stitching him up for the third time in three days is one he would rather leave unseen. 

    “Listen, Sophia saw you get hit.” He begins. “When you went down it didn't look like there was a very large chance of you getting back up. She wasn't able to do a thing so they just picked you up with the rest of the wounded.”

    “Why didn't she stay where she was supposed to?” Huck know Sophia isn’t one to listen to authority, he likes that, but he at least thought she had some self preservation. 

    “Because it's Sophia? You know how she is. If I had my say she wouldn't be anywhere near this mess. Anyway, thank God she did.” Huck would really like it if people would stop saying that to him. “Once she thought you were out of commission she just rushed in, like an idiot, and started weeping and crying until someone told her what was going on. Got taken back to some encampment and was left alone. Started shoving papers in her pockets like mad. Rushed outta there before anyone could start asking questions.” David pauses and laughs quietly before continuing. “I swear sometimes you work your heart out for something you are so sure of, only to find that what you were looking for was there all along.” 

    Huck felt they related to that statement on two very different levels. 

    “So, when your letter showed up, you can you can imagine we were all quite surprised. Surprised and a little, “ He takes an awkward pause that sort of kills Huck inside, “...panicked. 

    “Panicked? Surely y'all believe in me enough to survive across enemy lines.” Huck scoffs. 

    “Well of course!” David says going on the defense. “These people might be bastards but you are more resilient then anyone would think. I mean my God! If I was beat-” He stops suddenly and just about three words before Huck would have punched him in the face, stitches be damned. “Well, that's not the point. We’ve got to extract you from this situation.”

    “Extract?” Huck questions, feeling a little less pliable than normal, given what just almost went down. 

    “Now that we have enough information about the where and why's there's no reason why we can't match them and beat em’ at their own game.” David explains, and something is crawling into the edges of his eyes that reminds huck of a man he once knew who tore out the throat of a runaway slave. Rage is a disease that is undiagnosable.  

    “Beat em’ at their own game?” He would love it if one thing out of this man’s mouth made sense. It might just be the exhaustion but damn. “I mean I was born and raised here, but let’s be honest. This is their land. And with the Union so focused on all that going down in Shenandoah Valley with Early and all-”

    “Didn’t you hear?’ David asks, for some reason, because it’s obvious the Huck would have not heard. Maybe he just likes vaguely torturing people. “General Sheridan took out Early just today, so he is marching west now to meet Curtis.”

    “What do they have in mind?” Huck asks cautiously.

    “Oh, not in mind. All but signed, sealed, and delivered. See, the ‘federcy’s whole plan is about them being able to hold the city and wait them out. Then by the time Union troops arrive it's already fallen. So, if they are already here, that fails.”

     “Yes, but I already know that.” Huck snaps, running out of patience. “Then it’s just another battle. I can sneak out when the wounded are coming in the days after. Either that or when they're retreating. That's surely no need for panic. You know how well I can slip away.” He looks to the door and wonders if he can claim he has some appointment to get away. Midnight rendezvous are climbing onto the list of things he is beginning to hate. But then David takes a very different tone.

     “Well. You see. Uh, I mean-” He starts. Nervously. Like he hasn’t planned what he was going to say. Which, in contrast to his scripted speech makes Huck extremely cautious. “In order to insure the defeat of the Confederacy. Well, to put it lightly, Curtis isn't taking any chances.”

     “And what do you mean by that?” Huck asks slowly.

     “Ah. Well, the Confederacy’s plan also hinges on an unlimited supply of forces. Overwhelming the city takes people. People who are going to be injured in taking the city so you'll need….”

     “Medical.” Huck finishes for him.

     “And if you get rid of medical reinforcement…” David coughs out.

     “And how do you imagine doing that?” Huck asks, firmly believing that sentence doesn’t deserve finishing. And David’s reply only furthers Huck’s belief. With a shrug and a flippant tone David replies, 

     “Lock the doors and torch the place.”

Yeah, Huck was definitely going to throw up. 

     “Which is why we need to get you out of here. That’s why I came. We need to go, now.” 

     David starts standing up and he starts pulling Huck up as well and David keeps talking about how glad he is Huck’s alive and Huck’s not sure what’s happening right now because he can’t really feel his body right now but David needs to stop talking.

He needs to stop talking  _ now _ . 

     “I can’t.” Huck blurts out. He thinks back to the last time he was forced to make this many ethical decisions in a single rotation of the run and can suddenly feel cold water rushing against his legs. He can once again smell the river’s breeze. He can once again feel the feeling of air being pressed out of his lungs and expelled from his throat by the invasion of raw and horrific guilt. He can not let it eat at him any longer. 

    “What do you mean?” David asks, completely dumbfounded. 

    “I can’t walk now. You saw me. I could barely stand as it is.” Huck lied. For the second time that day. If one lies for the goodness of man is he still damned to the consequences? If one lies  _ with  _ the damned is he too condemned to share their fate? But most of all, if one lies  _ for  _ the damned, against his own cause, has he too chosen damnation? 

    “Come on now. We can go slow. I am sure-”

    “No.” Huck commands. It’s his final word on the subject. “Besides, there is much more I could learn here. We might not know all.”

    “Are you sure?” David asks, but already moving away from Huck and towards the back door from which he must have entered. 

    “Of course. It is for the cause after all.” Huck says and it must be the darkness because David believes the falcitly of Huck’s smile in that moment. 

    “I can’t tell you when it’s happening. But I know it has to be sometime this week. When you start hearing shots we need you run and meet us north east, in the forest. Can you handle that?” David asks.

    “I don’t really have a choice? Do I?” Huck replied. 

And then David left.

And then Huck was alone.

Again. 

    The last time Huck made a decision like this - three big things happened. One. He became Huck the abolitionist. See him over there? The one with the dirt on his face and calluses on his hands. Huck the black lover. More tainted than he already was. Two. He was no longer afraid. He stood up to those who saw him as tainted. He learned how to bite. He learned to bite  _ back _ . Three. He slowly forgot that he had the ability, at any one point in time, to completely change his own life. 

     And while the universe might be trying to remind him about number three. It was never about anything but number two. 

Not being afraid. 

But maybe, more importantly in this instance, not being afraid to do what’s right.


	9. 21 October 1864

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two dudes, sitting on a bench, no feet apart because they are flirting with each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while - this chapter is also three times the usual length so its technically three chapters as well as being extra soft as penance for being gone which the reason is I graduate high school as valedictorian of my class tomorrow.

    “ _ What did I say! _ What did I literally say, not even three days ago about getting up? Do you listen to me? Can you hear me?”

    Huck Finn is once more getting yelled at. It’s a sensation that he has come to find himself at the end of someone’s  _ pen is mightier than the sword and all that _ more than a few times in his brief time spent… well… mostly getting yelled at by someone or another. This time it is Tom Sawyer. It seems to be usually Tom Sawyer.  Huck could barely roll his eyes before Tom started off again, “Well, since you were rude enough to miss your so adamantly scheduled therapy appointment -” 

    “I was passed out. Wasn’t it you telling me I need more sleep?” He very much felt like the two of them were stuck in some sort of personal hell carousel which forced them to relive the same interactions day in and day out. The times when Tom Sawyer came in and complained to Huck - sometimes about Huck, but in the cases where his aptitude fell short, about anything that he so felt like. It occurred to the extent that Huck didn’t know what his life would be if he didn’t have the hourly update on how David,  _ the soldier - not the aide - same guy who thought all apples came from one tree. Yeah that guy _ , was enamored of this nurse and was attempting to win her over through various declarations of love. 

    But of course, only in the general sense that is. In the sense, one doesn’t really know what they would do without their mother when they get punched in the face for calling Ryan and low life slug, or what they would do without the pastor when you decide to elope. In the way, you need something momentary to assist you - nothing long term.

     Nothing long term because soon this place was going to be ashes to ashes and dust to dust and Huck was the only one that knew that and he -

    And he…..he didn’t know what to do. He means, he knows what he  _ needs  _ to do but going about it? Well, that’s always the million dollar task isn’t it, and there’s a reason he doesn’t have a cent to his name. For a man who’s used to leaving problem to face his back - looking them in their gunmetal blue eyes and telling them  _ You have no reason to believe me, but you are all going to die,  _ is proving rather difficult. 

   “Yeah. Well. Guess whose fault that was?” Tom responds and his sarcasm brings Huck to the realization that he is not alone to have a personal colloquy. “So. I guess we have to do it now.” 

   “Or we could just… not do it.” Huck puts forth. “Have you considered that?” He gets a glare that could melt steel at that point.

    “Look. There is a box on this piece of paper that I need to check. Okay? Although, it seems we are both doing fine at warping the truth a little bit on the spot, I am not that great at falsifying medical records. Otherwise, Mr. “Let's go for a midday sprint through the swap” would never have existed. Regarding that, we are going to do this if it kills us both.”

    He takes that moment then to look down and survey the damage which they have to surmount, otherwise known as Huck Finn’s three time stitched up leg, which is currently turning the white bandages red - even in a horizontal position. “Which it just might, I guess.” Tom mutters under his breath. That does not do anything to boost Huck’s confidence about this whole situation. Well, those that con high powers together stick together - there has got to be something they can do to make this happen.

    “Uhhhhh.” Tom stalls and Huck can see him working things out in his head. “Since I took an oath to do no harm, or something of the sort, to be honest, I kind of tuned it out, how about we just call it good if we can get to the end of the hall and back without having you tear anything? I think that would be fine considering you always seem to be fine with the  _ walking  _ part. It is just the part where you have to, you know,  _ notice your surroundings. _ ”

    “Glad you got that last jab in. I was beginning to suspect you might actually care about my wellbeing.” Huck says throwing his legs over the side of the bed and starting the process of mentally preparing himself to make some good life choices. 

    “Don’t even start that with me. There was another battle in Lexington and I get called out for ONE DAY! ONE DAY! And this is what happens? I think you are just trying to find a way to make my professional career a nightmare.” Tom rants, as he crosses around and sticks out his hands - palms up - in some sort of weird ‘ _ let me baptize you in the waters’  _ move. 

    “What are you doing?” Huck asks trying to push himself up, which, when one needs to worry about not hurting themselves - leg and shoulder both - is much more difficult than the  _ fuck it  _ attitude of his past.

    “Offering to help you up? What does it look like I am doing?” Tom replies, tone laced with curiosity. Huck decides to keep his observation to himself and instead grabs Tom’s forearms, which are strangely soft under his own rough hands and pulls himself up. His feet land on the ground and Huck winces and muffles his cry of pain because _ holy fuck _ that hurt more than he thought it was going to. His shoulder seems to be in working order, so at least something is healing right, but his leg. Well, Huck is feeling those three surgeries. 

     “Sorry.” Tom spews out, as if he is personally responsible for Huck’s pain. Maybe he can feel it simply by having Huck touch him - as Tom’s eye too light up with pain. It wouldn’t surprise Huck; to be cursed to redistribute pain. “But you know how-”

    “It’s fine. I’m used to it by now.” Huck spits out between his teeth. Taking his own slow time to breathe, he grounds himself by pushing his fingerprints into Tom’s arm with a grip that must be painful but right now that force is the only thing keeping him upright. 

    “That’s a horrendous thing to say.” Tom scoffs out throwing Huck’s statement away in haste. “Do you want me to get someone of more… uh….” The pause eats away at them for a while, “... more efficient caliber to help you with this… excursion?” 

   “I said it’s fine.” Huck says quickly. He glances up, finally having enough control over his pain to draw his eyes from the hardwood floor and something many people would define as  _ a moment  _ occurs. One of those moments when you know something is happening - as if the world is saving your progress so far, just in case you make the wrong decision and are forced to come and relive this moment over and over again as you desperately try to fall asleep.

    Huck is also close enough now to realize that he is just a bit taller than Tom. Not by much. Not by any amount of distance that would be able to be distinguished unless the two parties were standing braced together like this. His forearms pressing down on Tom’s and in a sort of panic-inducing epiphany, Huck realizes that Tom is the only one here who he would ever trust to see him this.. this.. this disgustingly weak.

    He jerks his chin up and Tom reads what he means and together they take a couple steps forward towards the door before Huck is forced to stop and deep breathe through the pain.

    “I know you said you were fine. But was that fine in the way it  actually doesn't hurt, or fine in the way where if you feel pain you suddenly aren't a man anymore?” Tom asks softly. In a tone of voice that has rarely been used in Huck’s direction. “Because I have to say the second one only leads to me having to amputate your leg.”

    “It’s the, I’ve had worse kind.” Huck responds. He pushes against Tom and takes another step and realizes that no matter how much he feels like he is going to pass over to the other side right now, it doesn’t even touch the pain from the collective smear of cracks in his ribs that probably haven’t healed right. He should probably mention that to the doctor at some point. But nonetheless, he has survived much worse, much younger - so why is this so goddamn  _ hard _ ?

   “Why do you keep saying that?” Tom asks gripping Huck’s arm’s right back at him and at this point blank range Huck should be able to see what the other man thinks, but he still has to ask, 

    “What do you mean?” Seeming to be one step behind Tom, both physically and mentally. 

    “You keep saying things like that. And I don’t get it. How can anyone say that pain doesn't matter? It seems like something from a bad novel my sister would read. Everyone hurts.” Tom says like it’s obvious, like everyone knows this, like its common fucking knowledge. 

    “Yeah. Well, some people hurt more than others.” Huck spits out gripping Tom a little bit tighter than necessary and pushing forward about four more feet. Tom moves backwards and Huck can see his train of thought drift on the tracks for a second as he spots Huck. They are almost to the door now. After that he just has to make it out and down the hall, which is probably itself twenty feet or more, then of course all the way back. Simple to do. Right? 

    “That’s what I mean. Right there.” Tom calls out and his hands twitch like they want to be thrown out in exasperation. “What’s with that?”

    “I am not about to detail my tragic backstory to you because you- ” He jerks forward in attempts to make his point all the more clearer, “-got us into this situation.” And another step in order to get this whole thing over with. 

    “Hold on there. I remember you agreeing to this whole stupid thing in the first place. Anyway, I am a doct-. Well, I am here to help you.”

    “I’ve survived so far. No thanks.” Huck bites out. 

    “Fine. Whatever.” He seems to drop it and silence takes over them. Huck pushes forward slowly, having to put almost his whole weight onto his leg each time in order to make any progress in the positive direction. Together they say nothing, as they walk through the door frame and out into the hall. Huck decides that since he has made it this far without dying he can take a second to just breathe again. He looks up and sees Tom chewing the inside of his mouth which probably means that he wants to say something. 

    “Just,” There it is, “know that, just because no one can seem to look behind them and see the nightmare they are leaving in their wake doesn’t mean you have to keep drowning in it. Okay?” That makes Huck freeze up. 

    “What does that even mean?” Huck asks, bewildered. 

    “I’m just saying it’s not a bad thing to throw off those who hurt you.” Tom talks like he is trying desperately to sound as if he is discussing nothing other than perhaps the weather, probably to ease Huck’s mind about discussing such a subject. Which Huck finds actually kind of admirable. That someone would attempt to con him into being a healthier person; but the fact still remains that Tom, a Confederate, is saying it is right and just to throw off pain and suffering… and well... that’s just too much hypocrisy for Huck to handle. 

    “Isn’t that what this war is about?” Huck starts, going off in a manner that he has no right to considering that for all extensive purposes, he is a Confederate soldier. Someone trained and taught to protect the liberties of “freedom” but conveniently leaving out the “for all” portion. “Isn’t this war telling people that sometimes they have to suffer? Maybe I’m just one of them.” Huck finishes and that self-deprecation numbs the pain in his body long enough to stumble forward four whole steps, a new record. 

    “Well, that’s completely different.” Tom counters, almost at once. 

    “How?” Huck challenges.  _ How is this possibly any different? Men’s lives are at stake. Do you really know? Or are you just saying the because _ ~~_ you like me _ ~~ _ I’m white?  _

    “Because that’s how it’s always been. That’s just the way things are. And it’s supposed to be like that…” The words  _ is it not  _ remain unspoken but not unthought in both of their minds because good soldiers are not supposed to question what they are fighting for. Good soldiers are supposed to listen to instructions. Good soldiers are supposed to follow the party line. Problem is - neither of them are soldiers.  

    Huck grinds his teeth together hoping some of the residue will form the words spelling out how completely wrong that sentiment is. In the time before his less fortunate midnight rondevu with the messenger of this place’s destruction, aka David,  it would have been second nature for Huck to keep his mouth shut and simply trust that others knew better than him. 

   But now that those who act as his morality suddenly make him feel a little sick? Now Huck is alone to convey that this is how its always been for him as well. There is no difference for him either. If only there was a way to tell him that and he just might have someone understand that human suffering is universal; you can not negate that - no matter how much money your ignorance might bring. 

    “Have you ever been hungry?” Huck asks, going about this in the only way that he knows how, directly forward. “As in, haven’t eaten in days hungry?”

    “I can’t say that I have.” Tom answers, his confusion latching onto every syllable. 

     “Have you ever walked in a room and suddenly no one has anything to say anymore? And the floor starts to look like the president himself? And nobody can suddenly make eye contact?” Huck continues.

     “Can’t say that I relate to that either.” Tom replies quietly. 

     “I can. I have my entire damn life and I can tell you after a while, you start thinking that maybe there is some reason for your suffering. That all this shit can’t just be a damn coincidence and then all of that damnation other people are spewing suddenly don’t seem so wrong because if there is a God out there he would have stepped in by now. So, I get trying to take your own life back from God and into your own hands.”

      “That’s... “ Tom starts, struggling to get the word he wants. If it even exists. “No one should feel like that.”

      “If you really think that, I would have bet that you’d be more sympathetic to those people who just want to be seen as human beings. White or Black.” Huck snaps out, having no idea what came over him to make such an accusation in such a place as this. Tom stumbles back and Huck gets pulled forward as well, almost tripping over himself. But at least they are closer to their goal, any progress is still progress.

    They are almost to the end of the hall now. Only a couple more feet separates them and the halfway mark telling Huck that he doesn't have much time left to tell Tom what he actually needs to. But Tom’s silence after such an accusation as that is deafening and he's not sure if they are actually on the same page. As much as he thinks he knows this man there is a difference between,  _ yeah okay maybe we shouldn't own people  _ and  _ yeah I will totally betray my new country and make sure slavery is abolished in all its forms, no problem.  _

     In typical Huck Finn fashion, instead of gearing up and starting such a conversation, Huck figures he’s used up all of his risky conversation cards for today and instead decides to push forward. He can’t be perfect all the time. He’s not freakin’ Jesus. His hands are firm they push against Tom’s making him take his last step towards the end of the hall. They stop directly under the window, which the midday sun is cascading in, and Huck is sure he can see the very molecules of the universe in its throws of yellow sunshine over the well worn carpet. The hot sun lands on his skin and warms it and Huck is just about to go for it consequences be damned because he can smell burning flesh in his nose when Tom speaks instead.

    “Let’s take a break.” The words are solid with no emotion behind them.

    “What? No. I want to finish this.” Huck counters.

    “And we will. Let’s at least stop for now though. My arms are tired from holding you up and I would shudder to think of the consequences of re-injuring your shoulder as well. It seems to be the only part of you that’s healing fine.” The humor and snark are slowly leaking back in now.

   Huck decides to humor Tom then in return, and lets go of him. As he does so, he thinks he sees the faintest of bruises forming in the shape of his fingers and he can't/doesn’t want to name the feeling that the image invokes inside of him.

   They take a seat on this old bench underneath the window that in the past life was probably suited for an elderly woman and her quilting rather than two almost full grown men. Meaning that, the two of them are  _ very  _ close together now. Huck’s leg is stuck out in front of him which means from the juncture of his uninjured shoulder down to his knee is firmly pressed against Tom’s own side. Human touch is something that Huck never got used to, was never conditioned to in his youth, and having his body slotted against another makes his mind run error message after error message. Then Tom, lacking any other room, sets his hand to casual rest on Huck’s leg.

And Huck’s mind just stops working. 

    Tom makes no movement in the next minutes that pass to remove it and Huck thinks that because so much time has passed now it would just be  _ weird  _ to move it, you know? Like what’s the big deal anyway? It’s just a hand. It doesn't  _ mean  _ anything. It's not like he needs to  _ hold  _ it or anything. That would be weird. It’s fine. Everything is  _ fine _ . Just don’t look at it. Don’t even think about it.  

     “You’ll at least have an impressive scar.”

    “What?” Huck was absolutely not paying attention to anything that just came out of Tom’s mouth right then.

    “Your leg.” Tom repeats. “You’ll at least have an impressive scar. I know it must hurt like no other now, but you can impress all sort of lady types with that scar once this ends. I’m sure they throw themselves at the strong soldier type.”

    “Not that you’ve had any experience.” Huck accuses. For humorous purposes. Nothing more. 

    “Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be then.” Tom says shooting him a smile that says he is nothing but amused at such an accusation. 

    “That’s how it’s always been.” Huck says knocking his shoulder against Tom and desperately trying to hide the smile on his face. It was unbecoming of his reputation as a stoic figurehead. 

    “Okay Judas. All betrayal aside, you must have someone back home waiting for you. I mean just look at that face.” Tom says. “I personally find it appalling but I am sure the lady’s love the great bone structure. Brings out your eyes.” Huck snorts at that. Only Tom Sawyer could pull off such a backhanded compliment - to kiss the hand before he slaps them across the face. 

    “Oh no. My uh,” He coughs awkwardly, remembering his new and sudden affiliation with Sophia, “... sister is the only woman I have in my life. And she’s married… and my sister. What about you?” Huck asks. Completely nonchalantly. Doesn’t care one way or another. Just wondering. Whatever. _ It’s fine either way. _ “You got a mouth that worries me in more than one way. Looks like you could get into trouble with it.” 

     Tom smirks at that, the corner of said mouth tilting up into the look that makes Huck feel as if all his secrets have already been laid bare. “Unfortunately your teasing falls closer. I too have a sister who I see much more than any fine woman. Oh, and a brother who might as well be a woman with how much damn complaining he does. What’s more feminine than a woman?” He stops to think of whatever that would be. “That’s where Sid would fall.”

     “Maybe he ought to be out here getting some scars of his own.” Huck jokes. He would never wish to impose this on anybody. No matter how southern or apparently incompetent. 

     “Oh, oh no. That poor kid? Dead within the first day.” Tom laughs back. Seeming to conjure the image of said brother attempted to battle disease, weather, and heat as well as the entire Union forces.

     “That bad uh?” Huck asks. 

     “Worse than you can imagine. One time after he called me out for pretending to be sick so I didn't have to go to church I stuck a snake in his bed and he refused to sleep in it for six days. Six whole days. That was only after he screamed like a baby and then proceed to cry about it for hours.” Tom complains leaning just a little bit closer into the space Huck occupies and as Huck catches his breath, he learns that Tom smells of the copper tinge of blood and wild sage. 

    “Your justice is swift.”  Huck comments only slightly sarcastically. It’s his best defense mechanism after all. 

    “You’ve got to be when you’ve got siblings. You should know this?” Tom chastises. Looking as if it is an affront to all that is holy one does not plan out their sibling's frequent demise. “And in my humble but correct opinion, you should really hype up the story about how you got hit. When I got shot I told people that I got hit trying to save a baby, or a group of school children, or an elderly nun. Whatever I thought fit. You know, it makes everything sound much more daring and adventurous than it really is.” He concludes leaning back against the wall and Huck can no longer smell his metallic scent. 

     “You reek of mischief.” He comments instead, as if he doesn’t have the grasslands forever stained across his memory with the picture of this moment.

     “I most certainly do not. Perfidy! Scoundrel!” The insults are hurled with no string behind them, and if Huck only knew what they meant might make him laugh. 

     “Now I know you are up to no good. Trying to confuse a poor injured man with Harvard words?” Huck taunts leaning in to meet Tom in the middle of their shared space. He’s smiling now like he hasn’t done in ages, and the ache in his cheeks is a good sort of pain. Huck can feel the warmth from the body pressed next to him filter into his own skin and he notices that they are still pressed together, even closer now, and he can’t help but wonder what the hell that means. That they are both content to sit like this, with someone they should absolutely not be with. That sort of dangerous thinking leads to roads less traveled. 

     Then there is the sound of rolling thunder outside and their courage flees from the ghastly noise. Tom coughs, for no reason at all, and whips away.

     “So anyway, as I was telling you. Maybe you can tell the ladies you were in an explosion to win them over. Not that far from the truth. I’m sure even your tiny brain can handle that.” Tom stutters out, a characteristic completely out of his character. 

     “Sure. It will be a nice addition to the collection.” Huck replies absentmindedly. His head still lingering forty five seconds in the past. This causes Tom to stumble once more,

    “Collection? You mean this isn’t the first? Why didn’t you tell me?” Tom accuses punching Huck in the shoulder, which actually kind of hurt. 

    “It isn’t someth-. Wait, shouldn’t you know this already as my doc- assigned assistant?” Huck asks suddenly reminded of Tom’s incompetence. 

     “Listen. I wasn’t there when they cut you out of that blood soaked rag you would call a uniform when ya’ were hauled in here.” He pauses and Huck feels like whatever is coming is not good based on the amount of devilish glare that is brewing in Tom’s eyes. “In fact, now that I am being forced to think about such a thing. I believe the only time I’ve seen you without the company of a shirt is our first meeting. Quite a first impression I must admit.” 

      “Well, it is certainly a disappointment you didn’t pay attention.” Huck sighs. “As you can’t mean me to show you now?” That last part was a legitimate question. One that would probably go without a serious answer, but he felt he needed to ask it nonetheless. 

      “I mean if you want to be rid of it I shan't stop you. In fact, I encourage it. It’s the only way to prove your story, and I am nothing if not a pursuer of truth.” Huck, not one to back down from a fight, which this is in a way, replies,

     “Alright then. Not in the middle of this hall, however. Next time?”

     “Next time?” Tom stutters choking on seemingly nothing but the idea or the spit in his mouth. 

     “Yes. You hard of hearing? I don’t think I will be fully thearputized by this singular walk. So next time.” Huck replies and the feeling of power in him grows as Tom continues to blush. 

    “It’s set then. Don’t stand me up.” Tom says, slowly recovering.

    “Or else?” Huck raises an eyebrow.

    “Or else you will have a whole new set of scars and stories.” Tom answers smoothly, having regained what little composure he has to his name. “So… what kind of fights did you get in? Were they daring?” 

    “I wouldn’t say daring. And I wouldn’t call them fights. Most of them weren’t exactly two sided.” Huck tells him. Not sure if he actually wants to go down this road right now - without an escape present. 

    “Still. That’s badass.” Tom comments.

    “Is it?” Huck thinks back to him with snot and tears running down his face unable to breathe through his nose and thinks that is kind of the polar opposite of badassery. But Tom seems to know more about this heroic stuff than Huck. He always was one to make his own drum beats. 

    “Sure! Having something to prove someone tried to kill you but couldn’t get the job done? It’s like saying you cheated death.” Tom explains. Though this time without any sense of condescendment in his tone. Huck just raises his eyebrow, not even bothering to honor that with a reply - because  _ come on _ , that’s something that can only come from someone who is as entrenched in romanticizing things as Tom.

    “Judas Priest! You don’t believe me do you! Fine!” Tom scoffs. “I’ll just show you. What’s that from?” Tom asks pointing to the jagged white line that runs on the back of Huck’s forearm. 

    “I got pushed into a fireplace. Cut myself on the grate. Burned off all the hair on my arm as well.” Huck replies and does not think about the smell, he does not think about being pulled from the table, he does not think about the door slamming open. He does not think about it, does not think about it,  _ does not think about it.  _

     “I’m sorry. I think I heard you wrong. You got  _ pushed _ into a  _ fireplace?” _

     “Yeah, but I mean. It was fine. It wasn’t the first time. I knew what to do.” Huck said, because really Tom didn’t have to worry about it. But Tom just stares up at him like he just said the universe lives on the back of a turtle.

     “It’s not that big of a deal! I mean, it probably happens to a lot of people. Parents right?” Huck starts picking at the skin that is peeling from his fingers until he sees red against his white skin. 

    “No.” Tom says slowly. “That does not happen to a lot of people. Who would even do that?”

    “I don’t really want to talk about him right now. About it - right now.” Huck grits out wishing his foot would stop bouncing. “If that’s all fine and well with you.” 

    “It that’s what you want. I respect that.” Tom says and Huck can feel the emotional distance that comes between them. “But you see what I mean, right? You’ve been through, quite literal hellfire and this is just the physical representation of that pain.”

    Huck can’t help but let out a hollow cry of laughter, “Well, most of the pain I felt was all in here.” He hits his chest. “If I had to display that, I would probably look just as ugly as I deserve to for all of the terrible things I've done in this lifetime.”  _ Not believing in god, freeing slaves, falling in love with- _

     “What about that one?” Tom asks, this time indicating to his jaw - just below his ear. Huck is not even sure how Tom noticed the small mark that he himself wouldn’t know exist if it hadn’t stung like a bitch. 

    “I got hit by someone with a rather… interesting ring.” He remembered then being yelled out for ruining said ring with his dirty blood. 

    “You’ve survived the bousogise. The most fearsome of them all.” Tom says with too cheerful a tone. “See what I mean? They all tell tales of survival.”

    “But not all of them are like that. Some of them just….are.” God, why did words have to be so hard for Huck? It’s just sounds! Just make them come out!

    “I’m sure that’s not true.” Tom refutes. “Mark above your eyebrow?”

    “Well thrown bottle. I’m just glad none of it got in my eye.” Huck replies - tired of this. Tired of his own body. Tired. Tired. Tired. Tired. “Are you finished yet?”

    “Last one. That.” He points to the white line that zigzags over the divot in Huck’s left hand. 

    “Uhh that was for touching something I shouldn’t have.” He chuckles a little bit. “You know, sometimes I’m not sure if I still have feeling in my pinky. Really throws you off in the cold.”

    Tom takes his hand and runs his thumb over the almost unnoticeable white line. Funny how something so unnoticeable could make such a big difference in someone's life. He flips Huck’s hand over and traces the lines that run across his palm. It’s a strange having Tom ghosting over the calluses that have been built by freeing those bound by the people whose blood runs underneath Tom’s fingernails. This softness feels perverted, like it needs to be reserved for those in better standing and this is just subverting it to damnation. 

      “That’s really all of them. At least the ones available to be shown in polite company.” Huck says in a voice barely a whisper. 

     “I think you have more than that.” Tom replies. Cryptic. Always cryptic. 

    “What do you mean?” Huck asks.

    “Not all scaring is visible.” And his voice and face are both laced with pity. And Huck absolutely cannot look at that, so he casts his eyes away and instead looks down, to where he sees that they are holding hands. Palms pressed together and fingers interwoven, type of holding hands. 

And that makes Huck terrified. 

    “We had better get back to it if we ever want to finish.” Huck cries, voice to loud for the room, as he vaults himself into a standing position. Since neither of them had thought to let go of the others hand, Tom gets whipped up as well. And, although Huck had momentarily forgotten about the pain caused by such an action as standing, his leg had not forgotten to send the shooting pulse throughout his entire body. Therefore, Huck was not surprised when he saw black crowd into his vision and he felt himself start to fall. 

    But he never hit the ground; because one second he's about to become good old pals with the floor, again, and the next there’s an arm firm against his back and another one bracing against his good shoulder.

    “I got you.” Tom seems to know better than to scold him.

    “I know I can do this.” Huck bites out, the words spitting between his teeth. “God. It’s just some pieces of metal!” 

     His head seems too heavy to carry on his own and his neck seems to be unable to bear the weight of the thoughts in his head he snaps forward and drops his forehead to meet with Tom’s. He can feel the warm breath from the other as he probably struggles to bear everything emotional and physical Huck is unfairly throwing on to him. Tom reaches up and Huck thinks he is going to be shoved away and told to soldier on, like usual, like always, but Tom just reaches up and carefully tucks some hair behind his ear.

    “You know my mom, or well my aunt, mom died before that - but she used to have this saying.” There is grey in Tom’s eyes. “ You can not touch anyone without being touched back.” There are sixteen freckles on Tom’s left cheekbone. “I mean look at me! I helped you along and now I got your fingerprints bruised into my skin. Quite a grip you have there.” He finishes with a laugh. 

    How is someone to stay the same once they are touched by another? Once they see their life and thoughts and struggles? Humans are known to pack bond with anything but their own kind and that kind of apathy corrupts. To stay the same is to join the oppression. But to change yourself? That’s a true biblical miracle. And right now Huck is touching Tom in all the ways except the one he needs too because he can smell smoke and ash and need to tell him so he opens his mouth-

    “But you’re right. We should be moving back. Your body isn’t going to heal itself!” It’s the wrong voice. Wrong person. 

Later then. Always later. 


	10. 22 October 1864

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you’re gay, and I’m gay. Who’s the straight male protagonist driving this ship?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mostly wrote while watching the tony awards and flying across the country.

     Many things happened on the 22nd of October. The Shimonoseki Indemnities were signed at Yokohama, the first car dealership opened in London, the Cuban missile crisis didn’t end up going down; all important things that were to come and pass and stow away in the minds of millions. However, in the year of our Lord 1864, on October 22, only one thing was acting across the world stage.

    The Second Battle of Independence. 

    (Or so it would be called by historians in the months to come.) Such a battle which was waged in the town of Independence, shocker right, placed right in the heart of Jackson County, Missouri. A county that was supposedly home to the garden of Eden according to a certain ‘Latter Day’ based religion; but that’s 1823 and this is 64’ and the bloodshed has just finished - leaving the Confederate Army in a victory (that would be short lived but they’ll get to that later.) 

   However, out of all victory, of course, comes the numbers. The number of bullets fired, weapons lost, people dead, and in Tom Sawyer’s case - the number of wounded. A number that he really didn’t have time to think about because he’s been working since sun up and the sun is setting right now and he has held a total of fifteen people’s internal organs in his hands, which is where they are  _ not  _ supposed to be.  

   And now? Now, after everything, he’s being pulled away from a man who probably won’t have a face anymore in order to bandage up some idiot who has some laceration or something and is bleeding out and honestly he couldn’t really complain because if he’s going, to be honest (which he rarely is) Tom is starting to think he can see dead people - which is never a good place to be. 

\---

Okay.

Huck will be the first to admit he’s what people would call ‘ a pariah’, but he’s not nefarious. Not by any means. 

   So maybe Huck saw Tom running past him with wet blood smeared across his cheek as he stood in the doorway trying to see what all the doctors rushing past him to all the outrageous commotion was (because hey, he’s got to do the whole walking thing more often if he is ever going to get better, so now’s the time). 

    Did Huck feel bad for Tom and get some sort of clenching feeling in his chest when he saw the blood was still there, dried and flaky hours later, meaning the other man hadn’t paused for a single moment?

No!

    Does Huck sound like the kind of person to stick his thumb in the perfectly fine and meticulously stitched up wound on his shoulder, count to three, then pull back - making himself bleed all over the place?  _  Oh God that is actually a lot of blood Jesus - Huck did not think this through… shit shit shit. _

Absolutely not. 

That would be stupid and painful. 

\---

   “How come I always end up here?” Tom asks. Maybe to Huck. Maybe to himself. Maybe to the creator of the universe. At this point, with him running on eight hours of sleep (this week), who really knows? They are sitting on the edge of Huck’s bed and Tom has taken up a spot pressed into Huck’s side as he surveys the damage done.

   The blood is gone now for Tom’s cheek. Huck doesn’t know how it got wiped away but his ever so helpful mind concocts the image of some delicate figure stopping Tom in the hallway and raising some soft hand to wipe it away with some giggle. She probably pushes a strand of hair behind her and looks down biting her lip. He hates her. Doesn’t know her. But hates her.

   “What do you mean by that?” Huck replies. The sleep deprivation induced outcry making no sense in his own comatose brain. He’s used to being confused by now. It’s second nature to follow up something with a question mark. Only with Tom, he doesn’t feel lesser for doing it. 

   “I mean here with you, that is. Fixing something stupid you did. In the middle of the night. I’m starting to think that this is a pattern.” Huck sees Tom flash something that is supposed to resemble a smile, or knowing Tom maybe a smirk, but it dies before it even touches his face and Huck doesn’t like that. He does not like that at all. “What’s the saying about that? One is chance. Two’s a coincidence. Three’s a pattern? I wonder what four is…. Almost to scared to ask!” He lets out a huff of laughter. Or what Huck is choosing to interpret as laughter because otherwise, that means things are  _ wrong  _ and Huck might have to talk about, like, issues. Which is to say, not one of his strong suits. 

   “Four is the sacrificial ceremony.” Huck replies, completely stone faced. He’s never good at understanding what people feel in their heads. It’s the one small part of this world where anyone is ever truly alone, and to go digging at it, no matter how good your intentions are, seems selfish and oppressive. So he hopes that Tom knows that this is him trying to never see whatever the heck that dead look was ever again. 

   It works.

   The corner of Tom’s mouth tilts up and his hands falter from where he had been pulling out whatever medical supplies he would need to fix the wound pouring out blood in Huck’s shoulder. 

    “I’ll make sure to wear my Sunday best then. And at least give me the chance to wash up. I wouldn’t want the old gods to see me in these rags.” He starts to take off the remains of the bandage that some pale faced nurse had wrapped around Huck’s shoulder in haste to stop the bleeding. “I’ve got a little too many blood souvenirs from other men.” He nods his head to Huck shoulder and his now slick hands as if to punctuate his point. “I wouldn’t want them getting confused as to the identity of their dinner.”

    At that Huck can’t help to laugh a little as well. Even if it does send what feels like three million and a half needles shooting into his shoulder. He just bites his cheek and bears it.

  “On the wonderful subject of death,” Huck mentions, finding the air to speak somehow. “You look closer to death than I do… and that’s saying something since I’m the one who was almost blown up, and just lost half of my body weight in blood loss.”

   “Why I will have you know, the no sleep in three days look is the high fashion in Charleston these days. Very popular with the ladies.” He starts wiping away the blood with some foul smelling liquid and Huck has to keep telling himself that yes, ripping out his stitches and endangering his health (and his mission of escape) was a good idea.

   “I’m not sure anything you wear will ever be popular with the ladies.” He spits out. Not letting any amount of pain take away from the chance to get in a spitting match with Tom. 

    “Careful there. I’m the one keeping you alive right now. Wouldn’t want the needle to slip.” Tom retorts back, but his eye aren’t moving from where he’s putting Huck back together.

   “Oh. I’m sure you are much too well trained for that. Wouldn’t want to disappoint whatever ivy covered brick building that graduated you. Would you?” There is a stitch that is done a little bit more forcefully than necessary at that remark.

   “Ow. Okay, too soon. How’s it going out there anyway?” Huck asks switching the direction of the conversation. “The injured seem to be endless, didn’t know there were even that many people in this state.” Huck internally debated whether this was a good thing or a bad thing for him. The more Confederates down, the less on the battlefield to worry about. Plus the extra men would mean no one would care if he were to suddenly… go missing. Which is a thought that still seems to sit in his brain like an unwanted houseguest who Huck know won’t leave no matter how long he hides in the bathroom for. It’s like the room is on fire and he’s just  _ sitting there.  _ There is smoke on the water and it’s filling his lungs and he just wants it to go away. “Are you treating everyone this harsh or just me?” 

   “Just you darlin’.” Tom replies, monotone, but there is a smirk on his face. 

   “And how are you taking care of yourself?” Huck takes a chance and asks. It’s a strange question, one of civility normally, which Huck has never been a part of. However, he’s probably not going to be here much longer so what’s the harm if he’s out of character? If you know the date of your death (or fake death… for the second time) Huck sees nothing wrong with living the way you want. In general, your life is yours to live. And right now he’s just a little too amazed that he cares about the answer to that question asked; when he really shouldn’t, because in a matter of days one of them will probably be dead and he cannot keep forgetting that.  

    But Tom makes it  _ so damn easy. _

   “I’m doing just fine thank you.” Tom answers easily and he starts bandaging up Huck’s shoulder, putting the white cloth over the no longer bleeding wound, when suddenly he stops, right in the middle of wrapping him up, and stares off into some other plane of existence. Ascending to a place that Huck can not go. Then he looks Huck in the eye, really looks, with the kind of intensity that makes Huck want to look away, seemingly too intimate to be on the receiving end.

   “You know what?” Tom says. “I am not doing fine.”

   Huck waits. 

   “I have not gotten a wink of sleep in the past oh, two days? As well as constantly smelling like the inside of decaying meat, as well as having completely run out of bandage, and the patients don’t stop coming by the way.” The words don’t stop coming. “I get told by some guy in some stupid hat, who I don’t know by the way, that we’ve won some battle and I can’t even find time to be excited about this God forsaken war maybe being closer to being over because I was to busy shoving a man’s intestines back in his body and I do not know how much longer I can do that.” Tom’s hands are shaking in his lap and the last part of that sentence doesn’t come out quite right because some vowels get caught on his tongue and stuck in the moisture welling up in his throat. 

    Huck is at a complete and utter loss on how to handle this. And that position of besument is something that comes so rarely he feels himself knocked down. Nobody in the history of… well,  _ ever  _ has trusted Huck Finn with their outright raw human emotions. He has never had someone bare themselves to him like Tom is doing right now and he can feel the trust slipping through the air between them the longer he remains silent. The timer has started and Huck’s entire vocabulary is failing him at this moment as all the words he’s ever known get trapped in his vocal cords.

    Huck doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, he  _ never  _ knows. 

    He gets himself into these situations where people trust him and he just completely fails them. Like his mother, like Sophia, like  _ Tom _ . 

    Tom, someone he doesn’t even know, not really, just handed himself to Huck and he hasn’t said a word. He tries to think back to that time on the bench. When the sun came streaming through the window and Tom was able to say all the right things about the trauma carved onto Huck’s skin. Trying to encapsulate the safety he felt into some speakable form to tell Tom,  _ I’m here. I’m here for you.  _

    The timer reaches zero and Huck can see Tom put himself together, alone. He’s going to speak any moment now and Huck can’t have that, because he’ll say something sarcastic and demeaning and Huck won't be able to discern between the villain of all that is the Confederacy he’s painted in his head and the cracked and broken thing in front of him. 

    Tom opens his mouth at the same time Huck reaches out and grabs Tom’s hand in his.

    “Lay here!” Huck vomits out. Smooth as gravel.

    “What?” Tom asks wary, but his hand doesn’t move from where Huck is holding it in his so he takes that as his sign to continue. 

    “You are sick? Aren’t you? That means you need to rest.” Huck continues. He knows that the mind of the man in front of him is sick, maybe in more ways than any rest can fix, but he also knows no one would ever believe that. 

    “My body is in perfect health.” Tom answers and to anyone else that might have been the end of the conversation. But Huck has been choosing his words carefully for his entire life now and knows that words mean something when they are spoken like that. 

    “Sometimes sickness isn’t always in the body,” Huck says. He figured out long ago that if you believe in what you are saying, even if the other person thinks it means nothing - you can convince anyone of anything. “Sometimes your head needs rest. So, lay down. Isn’t that what you tell everyone?” 

    Huck doesn’t even really give him a choice. One moment they are sitting on the edge of the bed, legs hanging off the side in a cruel imitation of childhood Huck never really had, and the next Tom is being guided down onto the well worn cotton white sheets. The bed, nothing more than a metal frame with peeling white paint to match, and some sort of canvas that counts as a mattress, was obviously not built to fit two grown men. But Tom and Huck, fitting in that space between being boys and men, too young to die, but old enough to be sent off to, are able to fit - so long as they press together and fit their sides together in which their arms, Tom’s left and Huck’s right, weave together and clasp. 

    Huck turns his head to lay sideways across the bed, and Tom does the same and Huck suddenly realizes this is the closest someone has ever been to him, except for his mother. Though, she is nothing more than a memory that has been rerun too many times and has since lost its colour. Then Tom smiles, and damn, Huck is going to straight up die. 

     Huck thinks that anything can happen right now, and God willing, Huck just might have something good happen to him. 

    “I’m left handed.” Tom whispers. His voice is so quiet and timid every syllable seems to take an entire breath to say. 

    “What?” Huck asks. Not one to really understand the traffic pattern of thought, he can’t help but wonder what the hell Tom is going on about. Maybe it was just him, but he kind of felt that something outside of both of them was happening and now Huck is left wondering what ‘left handedness’ has to do with the fact that they are intimately tied together. But maybe that last part doesn’t even matter. Whatever. He doesn’t care.

    “When I wrote that letter for you, the one to your sister, you told me to tell you a secret. In exchange for your, now I see careless recklessism. I was- I am left handed.”

    “Well, I can’t write so I don’t believe in judging in you.” Huck comments. He’s trying to pull away but there is absolutely zero room so now he’s got himself stuck in a situation where he’s point blank range with the only person who makes his heart beat a little bit faster in his chest and said person is talking about academia. 

    Great going Huck.

    “I thought you would be less inclined to judge on the bias of your education and more on… well, you know.” Tom indicated that Huck is supposed to fill in the rest of that sentence but Huck is still kind of lost in the fact he’s not three inches from completely probable love of his life’s face right now; trying to enjoy it while it lasts. Tom must catch on that he’s a little lost (much more in thought than conversation), because he runs his thumb over the white line on Huck’s hand and says, “The fact that we are both a little different.”

     Oh shit. 

_ Oh shit _ . Huck suddenly felt his heart kick up in his chest for all the wrong reasons. Tom knew. Tom knew that Huck kind of wanted to kiss him right now didn’t he. Now he was trying to enter into the whole,  _ God forgives all if you just repent and starve yourself and hate yourself  _ (which take that Pastor Dan, Huck already did). To be different in a world full of same was the highest of sins. 

     “What you said, about things that always are aren’t always in the natural right.” Tom whispers, scared of the words that are leaving his mouth. 

    Oh. 

_    Shit. _

__ Tom did not suddenly develop a severe memory disorder and forget the fact the Huck, hyped up on drugs and pain, almost straight up admitted to being an abolitionist in the middle of a Confederate hospital. Good to know. Now they were discussing the fact that maybe Tom wasn’t so  _ owning people is a right of man  _ as he might have previously been. Okay. Also good to know. 

     “It’s just,” Tom starts again, “how did you get to that point in your life? How did you know?” 

     “I’m used to the sort of self reflection that comes with examining the fact that your whole life might be built on lies and falsehoods.” Huck answers.  It’s almost painful to answer with the truth, even if it is half of it. Like a muscle never used, it screams in pain.

    “Don’t we all lie to ourselves sometimes?” Tom says, getting somewhere. “For instance, I lie to myself saying that it's not worth it to strangle Lewis in his bed for the bruises he lives on his wife because that's against the law. But is my life absent from prison worth condemning her to one?” Huck can see the confusion mixing against Tom’s steadfast reality as he vocalizes what must have been buried too deep to talk about for the longest time. 

     “If the law is unjust than it is our duty to break it.” Huck answers. Huck knows that if any law is oppressive, it is an unjust law, but he doesn’t say that, because that would mean Tom is fighting for nothing.

    “But the law is good. It is the people. People are able to use everything good for their own evil agenda.” Tom explains, still trying to wrange his own internal dichotomy. 

    “Well, that’s just it then isn’t it? Hell is other people.” Huck tells him. 

    “But how am I doomed to hell for loving humanity when Lewis, who hasn’t felt anything besides hate in eight years is going to get a personal meeting with the heavenly father?” Huck can feel Tom tense as he says this, growing more and more agitated. 

     “Sometimes I think people who don’t understand love just want to ruin it for others.” Huck says. “I mean why else would something so little as colour come between us and them.” 

     “No I meant I love-” Tom cuts himself off very abruptly and Huck sees fear start to swell up in his eyes.“Jesus Christ. I thought, you and - I mean, were too but- I’m sorry. I should go. I need to leave.” Then Tom is moving away, he is getting up, looking white as the sheets that they were just laying on. The absolute last thing Huck wants is for Tom to leave right now. He needs to start because Huck still needs to tell him everything from his feeling to the ever approaching inferno. 

     So, Huck in what he might refer to as a streak of madness and knowing that at this point actions had a louder voice than words, grabs onto Tom’s wrist with one hand, his cheek with the other and does what he should have done twenty minutes ago.

     If you would have told Huck that he would end up, past twenty years of age, kissing a fraudulent medical practitioner, who just so happened to be an ex-Confederate soldier, and,  _ oh yeah _ , a man, he wouldn’t have believed you for a second. But now, kissing Tom Sawyer, it made absolute sense that his life had been building up towards this moment. Huck wouldn’t trade the feeling of Tom’s lips moving against his, and his warm breath on his mouth, and his slightly rough face under his palms, and the fact the  _ Tom is kissing him back  _ for anything this damned world could offer him _.  _ Because as Tom’s lips moved against his and he felt the very much firmness of Tom’s body press into his chest, suddenly everything that they had been talking about clicks into place. Huck pulls back, doesn’t want to, but needs to, and ghosts across Tom’s lips the words, 

     “I’m left handed too.” They are said with a slight laugh at the end, which in turn makes Tom laugh and then they are both just standing there, in the dark, in the middle of a hospital wing, laughing. 

     “Here we are. Two complete and utter failures.” Tom says shaking his head and rolling his eyes. Huck takes Tom’s face in both of his hands and drops the sarcasm for just a minute.

     “You are so much more than a failure.” Huck tells him.

     “My entire military career might speak otherwise.” Tom snarks. “But it makes sense I’d be stupid enough to…” He stops and just gestures between them. Still not able to say it. Which is fine, Huck doesn’t think he could either. 

    “Being left handed has nothing to do with stupidity. Trust me. I’d know by now.” Huck has meant plenty of stupid people and Tom is not one of them. He pulls the other man into his arms and holds him tight, so that if Tom doesn’t believe his words he might his actions. 

    “I thought you couldn’t write.” Tom mumbles into Huck’s shoulder, apparently back on his usual bullshit.

    “I thought we were talking about something else, Sawyer.” Huck shoots back, pressing his cheek into Tom’s hair. He still smells like death, but underneath he is still the same. 

    “You know nobody has ever told me that.” Tom says pulling back and looking Huck in the eye, as if he himself doesn't believe that this is all true and happening. 

    “Told you that you are a dumbass?” Huck retorts. 

    “Told me that they are left handed you jerk.’ Tom replied giving Huck a shove in his good shoulder that he absolutely deserves. “Quite a leap of faith.” 

     “Well,” Huck says, ghosting his fingers over Tom’s arms, “I heard you would catch me.” 

    The part of Huck's brain that handles his higher processing and functioning tells him that he's going to have to leave this behind - just like he did his father and his state. But Tom is pushing back his hair and kissing him again and Huck has always known that the devil doesn't come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you've ever wished for and can never have. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if y’all know what happens on 23 october 1864 then you know what is about to go down and let me tell u it does hurt a little bit


	11. 23 October 1864 -- 9:34-9:58

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The phrase ‘fire and brimstone’ is one of those things you hear as a child and just put away with the rest of the funny things adults say like, ‘look for the silver lining’ or ‘eat your vegetables’. Those are things easily ignored. Therefore, it’s logical to assume fire and brimstone isn’t actually all that bad.  
> Holy shit, has Huck ever been more wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo it's been exactly a month since I posted. This entire fic was inspired by the events in this one chapter which came to me as I was driving down the highway and "i'm a wanted man" by the royal deluxe came on the radio. Which is funny because it was also the absolute hardest chapter to write aka the reason it took so long to get out. I apologise my dudes. 
> 
> warnings for language

    The universe never tells you when it’s going to screw you over. There is no two weeks in advance notice. There is no  _ oh hey by the way…  _ letter. There is no unfriending you from Facebook to at least let you get a grasp on the impending storm that is about to be blown your way 

   No. Much like a contagious virus, an internet meme, or the entire state of Great Britain, the universe simply sweeps into the room, demands to be given space, and then promptly gives you the middle finger if you kindly ask when it will be thinking about leaving. 

    Huck Finn is used to this kind of chaos. He’s become an agent of harnessing the ‘ _ well this sure isn’t ideal _ ’ situations of the world. If he had the education to do so, he might even refer to himself as pragmatic. Which, in a world of survival of the fittest, is a pretty darn good place to be. Maybe even the best. That, and a sense of when to just walk away, are maybe two of the largest reason why Huck Finn is still hear living and breathing to this day. 

     Ah, but back to the universe. Many people don’t understand the universe. They think the universe doesn’t care about them that, much like the Christo-Judean God, it has bigger and better thing to do than chastise old Henry for tax evasion. And sure, the universe doesn’t really care that you don’t want to help build libraries or roads or whatever it is government exactly does, but it does kind of care about the wellbeing of the the planet Earth. It also knows how long these things called humans tend to hold onto spite - and if the universe wants human rights by the time the humans get to the moon? They needed to start about forty years ago.

    Which is why Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and about five hundred other poor souls are about to be the collateral damage of what is the proverbial upper cut of the universe trying desperately to get the human race back on track. 

    Huck Finn is all too familiar with the sting that comes after a fist collides with his face. Needless to say, a lot of his blood is sitting on the floor the Missouri brush right now. Giving back to the Earth and all that - otherwise known as lies Huck tells himself to be able to sleep at night- and a good night's sleep is worth repressing your own bones cracking louder than the twigs you collapse on. 

   What is currently happening might be another one of those things that Huck puts away in his memory and never  _ ever  _ thinks about again. 

    It’s the twenty-third of October, in the year of our Lord eighteen sixty-four and Huck world has gone up in flames. Both figuratively and metaphorically. Those once distant and occasional bouts of fear that encompassed him with dreams of smoke and ash and that bright orange red flame licking at the grass outside have come knocking and demands an entry. 

    But Huck’s day didn’t start with the apocalypse calling. It actually started off actually quite good. For as he knows, the universe never tells you when it’s going to break your bones and quite possibly your heart, for, after all, Huck know how dangerous it is to love something that death can touch. 

\---

    When Huck awoke that morning, Tom was gone. It was no surprise really, I mean  _ that’s  _ certainly a scene he doesn't want to explain to anyone. Still, there is something inside of him the twists and screams when his eyes open and he realizes that there is no one in his arms. So what if he wants to be able to live in a world where he can wake up and press his face into the juncture between his lover’s head and shoulder and just be able to breathe in? So what if he wants to be able to slide his fingers along their jaw while the sleep peacefully? So what if he wants to be able to press his ear to their chest and just listen to their heartbeat, knowing that with a simple kiss he can make it pound. You don’t always get what you want in this life. 

    Sometimes you think that something is a clear cut black and white issue when really it’s so complex, it’s made of colours that you can’t actually see; some colours you haven’t even heard of. Does that make them any less valid to those who can see them? 

   Maybe Huck does throw his head back on the pillow and cover his face with his hands in attempts to hid his stupidly large smile because it’s just catching up with him that  _ holy shit somebody loves him.  _ Not just anyone either. An attractive surgeons assistant who understands the need to fuck with authority and is working on being a better person, which is all Huck can ask for. And he’s snarky, and doesn’t put up with Huck’s shit, but also super fucking hot.

    Jesus. Huck feels like he’s gonna make himself vomit out of disgust for just how absolutely whipped he is right now. It’s kind of pathetic. He doesn’t care. Everyone he’s ever known who told him he was going to die alone in a ditch can suck it right now because he loves someone and  _ they love him back _ . 

    Huck is overwhelmed with that type of feeling that makes your insides feel like jello and also makes him feel like a delicate high society woman who can’t stand the sight of blood, or something, instead of a totally rough and tumble man who is capable of shooting someone. 

     Huck sighs. He’ll need to pull himself together before Tom shows up. What can be shown in the darkness of night is very different to what is acceptable in the hours when anyone can happen upon them. There are some things that Huck hasn’t had much practice hiding, and he knows himself well enough to know there is no con he could pull that requires him to look at Tom without seeming completely smitten. 

   He can already tell it’s going to be a problem. However, he knows it’s a problem that he can solve with Tom. The fact that he finally has someone in his life who will help him with all of his problems makes him have to start pulling himself together all over again, because he has that stupid smile on his face again. Jesus. 

   However, October 23 begins to pass at an alarming rate with zero sighting of Huck Finn’s favourite person. Morning slips into afternoon. Afternoon clocks out as evening arrives. Soon the sun is setting behind the aspens in the distance and Huck has not seen Tom Sawyer a single time that day. 

    That worries him for so many reasons. He’s spent the day organizing an itemized list in his head. The first worry being that Tom actually hates him and never wants to see him again. The second being he got caught somehow and is now being drowned and or purged of his nasty sin. The third is that he died. Huck’s brain doesn’t really supply how that third one is an option, but still, it made the list. 

    Now it's dark out. Huck is panicking. Huck is not very good at panicking because usually nothing phases him, so this is kind of new to him and honestly he hates it. He feels like he can’t breathe and his heart is beating too fast for his comfort, for no reason at all, and his hands are way too sweaty. Huck wonders how so many people subject themselves to this. Caring about people seems to be a lot of work and he’s only been doing it for about three days. He hopes that it gets easier otherwise he just might have to lay down-

    Huck’s own person hyperventilating is interrupted at the moment by an extremely loud explosion. Cannon fire to be exact. Cannon fire that was caused by Mitchel Daves of the first infantry lighting the wick to what will be the first shot of the Battle of Westport. Westport being a town not far from Huck, and the location of “that thing that will happen at some time” David had told Huck about. That extremely loud cannon burst was the signal that Huck needed to get the  _ fuck  _ out of there. 

    A person’s first reaction to a moment of catastrophe says a lot about them. Huck’s fathers was to look for someone to project all of the pain he got from the world onto. Huck’s elderly female guardian taught him to pray. Huck’s only thought after the explosion had shot through his head was,

_ Where’s Tom? _

   Which might say more about Tom Sawyer’s impressive ability to make people fall in love with him than Huck Finn’s ability to fall in love. Maybe it’s a 50/50 split. Either way, two hundred feet away where Tom Sawyer is soaking forceps in something that seems like a good promise to get bloodstains off, he is thinking.

_ Is Huck okay? _

   Huck, as we know, is doing just fine. Tom doesn’t know that however, and that’s what future student’s of literature will learn is called  _ dramatic irony.  _ Therefore, they both run out into their respective halls and begin searching for the only thing they think has any value in this hospital. Which is to say, each other.

    Run is a strong word for Huck, however. It’s more of how one would imagine a baby deer would run after just being born. That or a giraffe on ice. Needless to say, its not pretty, graceful, or in anyway accurate at getting Huck where he needed to go. It’s like previously mentioned cannon - goes fast with zero accuracy.

     It’s this wildness ballet that sends Huck into the hall and into the chaos that consists of hundreds of people trying to prepare for the influx of patients from the hailfire of bullets that are exploding off in the distance. Huck looks out the window in the hallway to see the short flashes of bright white light in the distance telling him whatever his people have planned has been set into motion. His eyes lose focus for a second, trying to take it all in, and he notices that this is the same window that just days ago he sat under with Tom. They had been so close and he had been so scared… now he is at the same window, a different person, and scared for a completely different reason. If Tom for some reason isn’t in any other state than completely fine… no. Huck doesn’t even want to think about it. Huck is the only one who knows that the commotion outside means a whole heck of a lot more than just your average warfare. He’s sure in about five minutes no one will be able to leave this building.

    That means Huck only has minutes, on the optimistic side of things, to complete a sixteen step checklist that includes such things as A) find the love of your life and B) get both of you out of this alive. Sometime, maybe between items C) find state secrets and E) meet up with Sophia’s husband, there might be time for item D) tell said love that you are actually a spy for the opposing army, have been sort of lying to them, and is the reason this place is about to get deep fried extra crispy. 

    As people attend to their battle stations, Huck tries to stop several well to do looking soldier types, desperately asking them if they had seen anybody who looked like they would fist fight God in a field at three am, which is how Tom Sawyer generally looked all of the time. They just blew past him however, with shouts and yells of the good fight and promise of glory. Huck assumed that they had misread glory for gore and pushed upstream of the crowd. At this point he’s pushed father than he ever expected or kind of wanted to ever be in a Confederate building. He’s sure there are people dropping code names and locations around him, that there are letters from Price around here somewhere that would tell him information about what this whole war means to them and what they are prepared to do in order to win. He’s sure arson is on that list. But this temptation of information barely even holds his thoughts for more than the time it takes to blink, as in the next instant he sees a nurse who has once or twice been in his small ward in order to change the dressing on the comatose patients. 

    He pushes past a group of men who are being ushered on crutches into a room and towards her small form being swallowed by the stream of full grown men.

    “Miss. Excuse - yes, nurse. Ma’am. You. Yes. Do you know where Tom Sawyer is? Redish hair. This tall. Surgeon's assistant?” Huck tries to yell over the commotion.

    “Son, I’m not even sure where we are right now.” The woman replies. “If you say he’s an assistant to the Surgeon then that’s probably where he’s got to be.” Huck starts to ask her where the fuck the surgery wing is, but he can see she’s already looking past him at what is surely someone running towards them with their bones hanging out of their charred skin. It’s a much more demanding reality compared to the potential of someone's uncertain death. Huck took her unfocused stare as the cue he’s already been forgotten in case someone with any power or position comes snooping asking for questions and runs off in what he believed to be the surgery wing

_ Surgery. Surgery. Surgery. _ This simple word that Huck did not ever understand to its fullest extent was running through his mind at a pace that was on par with how fast his legs were trying to move him through all these damn hallways. Through the packed heat of bodies he sees a handwritten sign pointing left towards something that definitely has an S and a Y in it and sends himself sprinting that way. He throws himself through the double doors to what might have once been a ballroom.

    It seems there is nothing to be concerned of with causing a commotion. A bomb could probably go off and these people wouldn't even flinch. Huck stands in the doorway looking at the absolute mess of men and women rushing back and forth across the room, yelling, pushing people on beds. Some men have limbing sitting across from them while others let out cries of death before expelling a thick, chunky, redded mass out of their mouths that land with a  _ splat  _ sound on the floor next to them. Huck thinks that if he’s not careful his stomach contents might land with a matching  _ splat  _ on the floor as well. 

   Tom. Think of Tom. Tom needs you right now. Do not throw up for Tom. Think of him dead! You don’t want him dead so just think of his lifeless corp-  _ okaymaybedon’tdothat. _

__ “Excuse me sir.” Huck is saved from his own stupidity by a young woman rushing up to him. “Are you the porter? We need those splints right now.”

    “I’m sorry. I’m not the porter-” Huck manages to spill out.

    “Oh, I am so sorry.” She goes running off to someone who probably needs life saving medical attention but Huck grabs her arm as softly and non threatening as a tall and built man can.

    “I’m looking for an assistant. Sawyer. Tom Sawyer. I need- We need him right now.” Huck tells the woman hoping to the capital S, Something, that she has enough brain power to process his request. 

    “Sawyer's not here.”  _ Fuck. _ “Rogers is though. He can help with-” She starts to point in the direction of a sandy haired man pulling another man up off the floor and out of a puddle of his own blood.

     “Where did he go? I need to find him stat.” Huck picked that word up from Tom. It means, right now otherwise someone is going to die. He quite likes the power it brings. 

     “He rushed out of here as soon as the gunfire started.” She tells him obviously peeved at having to deal with this. Huck lets it go. “Said something about someone in head trauma. Damn annoying too. They are just bringing in the first men injured in the battle now. If you see him tell him to get his ass back here.” She then pulls out of his grip and scuttles over to help.

Huck will certainly not be doing what she suggests. 

    The first thing he will do is get them the hell out of this ticking time bomb to hell. The second thing will be to try and calm his heart which seems to be pounding louder than any damn gun fire. That gut punch of fear rocks through him and sends him cursing Tom for being so stupid as to go looking for him in this commotion. God, he can tell that Tom is one of those aggrandizing self sacrificial types who never thinks out the consequences of such actions. He can only hope that once Tom realises Huck isn’t there he gets himself out of this shit show.  _ Please Tom, just stay where you are. _ He spins around and throws himself back out into the halls running down the ornate carpet in what he hopes to be the direction he came from. When he hits the grand foyer and is just about ready to throw himself up the stairs six at a time when a man with a mustache that makes him look like a man leading an Oregon trail caravan.  

    “Son. Where do you think you are going?”  The man who seems to be one large meal away from busting open his uniform asks him. Huck doesn’t like men who call him ‘son’. It usually means that they expect they can tell him what to do. Huck might be in a rush to find the person he’s planning on spending the rest of his life following around, but he will not hesitate to throw punches at someone who considers him as someone who takes orders. Especially from men who think they are entitled to it. 

   “I’m looking for someone.” Huck says curtly. Giving the minimal amount of words right now because every second he spends with this idiot is a second the other idiot, the one he loves, can do some damage to himself.

   “We need all active duty to report to the-” Mr. I’m-the-Law-Tremble-and-Fear-Me starts gruffing out in that voice that makes Huck realize this is probably the day he’s been waiting for since he fucking popped out of the womb. Leading some helpless teenage boys to battle looks great on paper when you get to come out alive.

   “Well, that’s a disappointment then, seeing as I’m not on active duty.” Huck replies, trying to push past this wall of meat. The wall of meat doesn’t let him pass however.

    “You healthy and standing aren’t you? So, grab a gun! We got these Yankees so far up our asses I can taste them.” Huck’s the queer one in this conversation, by the way. He pulls together all the patience he has left in his body, which is about three ounces and replies,

   “No sir, you don’t understand I’m not a soldier. I’m looking for assistance-” And this fucker just cuts him off like he’s some babbling child.

   “I don’t give a damn what you are or who ya’ need! “ There is split flying out of his mouth as he says this. “We need relief efforts yesterday. So get a fucking move on it.”

    “I can’t do that I’m afraid.” It’s the most put together sentence Huck’s probably ever uttered and it’s to this asshole. What a waste of his education,.

    “What do you mean? You signed a contract to honor the orders of this military.” He reaches into the folds of his body where he probably kept his human decency and then lost it in there, and pulls out a pistol. He doesn’t even keep his finger on the safety; just points it right at Huck’s face. “Now get your ass out on this field and fight for some damn freedoms before I shoot you for desertion.”

   Before Huck can be shot down by someone who is probably named Hugh and thinks that his wife who has had six children and zero orgasms this year needs to be exorcised - a piercing scream echoes throughout and across the foyer Huck can see the east wing go up into flames. 

It’s time.

Huck takes the first page out of his father’s book, and pulls back his fist - thumb out like he’s taught - and just smashes it into what looks to be one of the man’s necks. Given the horrific choking sound that follows as the man and his gun drop to the ground, it appears that Huck has found his mark. He hurdles over him and launches himself back down the north wing. 

    Not a single person pays him any attention as they are all personally trying to find something, anything to break windows, smash doors,  _ please can anyone help us.  _  Where the  _ fuck  _ is his wing? Where could it possibly be? It’s not like this is an entire army encampment, it’s a plantation for Christ’s sake! How many wings could there be!

    As someone who has never been in a plantation house before, Huck Finn had no actual idea how large or small a plantation was. He knew you could easily make your way around city hall, and who would have the audacity to build a house bigger than city hall? No one. Right? 

    There is a shout and a crunch that doesn’t even sound real as somebody jumps from a third story window. Huck glances out of it briefly and sees something sticking out at an angle that even he knows it shouldn’t be turned at. It seems they aren’t walking away from that. He doesn’t have the time to dwell on that though. His brain doesn’t have time however, as he is running down the last hall he hasn’t checked, to supply him with the fact that there is something to be said for the harrowing dichotomy between having empathy for these people who are scared, and lonely, and slated to burn alive, while knowing these soldiers have called Huck’s friends animals and deserving of extinction. 

   It’s something Huck’s not sure he knows how to quite fit in his mind. He’s saved from having to think about it by turning to corner and coming face to face with his very familiar hallway. He’s through the door in no time at all and into the room where he finds…

     No one at all. 

     Not even the brain dead soldiers he had once called roommates were occupying the room anymore. He runs down to the opposite end of the room throwing aside sheets and dividers as if they had something to tell him.

     Huck lets out a scream of frustration. There are so many anxiety written thoughts that anything authored by logic is just drowned in the continuous stream of  _ he might be dead, he’s probably dead, he is dead.  _ He should have told him last night, he should have warned him ages ago. Huck slams his fist into the wood of the window frame and doesn’t even care about the blood it draws. This is one hundred percent his fault. His selfishness and inability to just tell Tom the damn truth because it might have gotten what, himself killed? Now he has now ended up killing Tom. Congrats, Finn. You will kill everyone who loves you. Your mother, the widow, Tom. Who’s next?

    He throws all of his weight into his fist hitting the wood again because he needs to feel something other than the overwhelming urge to break the glass and jump, but this time there is a crack that doesn’t come from Huck’s knuckles.

   It comes from one of the floorboards and the man who stands at the opposite end of the aisleway. Directly between Huck and the door; and he’s got that tightness in his shoulders that says he isn’t moving. 

   “I see you aren’t joining the rest of the evacuation.” The man says. That’s all Huck sees him as now. As in, now that he is able to stand and realize that he is several inches taller and made of several more pounds of muscle even after being bedridden for several days. What is God to you once you can look him in the face?

     No longer the god like figure that loomed over him as he sat helpless and paralyzed on the bed. His times of desperation to protect Tom Sawyer might still be continuing but he can hold his own now. 

    “Surgeon General Capris. Don’t you have more… pressing matters at hand?” Huck asks calmly. But no matter how still his voice is, his eyes can still see that there is a small pistol clutched in his wrinkled hands. Hands that seem to be laced with an unsettling tint of red. 

    “Don’t you have an escape route to follow?” Capris shoots back. He’s got the look of a man who’s allergic to what Huck is selling.

    “I’ve heard I’m suffering from a brain trauma.” Huck shoots back. “Must just be turned around. I’ll get going now.” Going to where he has no freaking clue. But anywhere is better than here, staring down an unhinged general. Said general takes a step closer. Though still at his side, the gun stays tightly gripped in his hand. 

    “Yes. I think you are lost.” Capris says. Which to Huck, seems like a jab at something that’s standing right behind him - just out of his reach of comprehension - which is where most things reside for Huck. However, it isn’t a request to stay so Huck takes a step directly towards Capris; to move past him to the door - and that’s when the gun comes up. 

     Huck puts his palms up as if on an automatic response. 

     The old man speaks again. “That’s the problem with your lot. Always putting themselves somewhere they just don't belong.” Huck opens his mouth to answer with whatever typical excuse of confusion will find its way out of him first in response to having a gun pointed at him. 

     “I have been looking for you for a long time.” He says it to himself. In the way people do when they are experiencing something and someone else just so happens to be there and must endure it like a child’s tantrum. 

     “Then you must not have very good eyesight sir.” Huck snaps out. The temperature in the room is rising now which means that that source, aka the blazing inferno that David and his men no doubt set off, is hurtling towards them eating everything in its path up. 

     “Don't you mouth off to me!” Capris explodes. He takes a step closer looking as if he wishes to crack the sturdy metal of his gun across Huck’s jaw but not willing to get that close. Maybe he is afraid abolitionism is contagious. 

    “You’re right. There are much better things for my mouth to do. And you aren’t one of them I’m afraid.” Huck replies feeling prouder than usually for that comeback.

    “You admit it so easily? That you are a traitor to our cause?” Capris yells, his entire body shaking. 

    “What can I say? I’ve always hated the colour grey.” Huck remarks flippantly. 

    “How can you betray your country like this?” Capris spits out at Huck, like he has any idea of what loyalty is. A loyalty that is to anything besides something other than power and everything it can get you. 

    “I am trying to save my country!” Huck downright yells. He knows he doesn’t have the time to do this. Hell, doesn’t have the energy, but he doesn’t know where else to go. He’s lost in more way than one and fighting with his elders is the one damn thing he knows how to do right. 

    “And how are you going to do that with thousands of illiterate, dirty, half breeds out on the street? You just want them to walk among us? Like they human? Like they equal?” Capris asks. He honestly opens his mouth and asks Huck that type of question and expects a damn answer. 

    “That’s sort of the party line.” Huck retorts. “So, yeah.”

    “You would give up your Confederate ideals so easily?” Capris seems almost hurt as he says this. Perhaps it physically pains him to imagine giving up being a bigot. If Huck were a better man he would feel sorry for Capris. Unfortunately for Capris, the better man was beaten out of Huck at a young age. 

    “You’re mistake was thinking I ever held them.” Huck snaps back. Then he adds just for good measure, “You might want to check what your nursing staff is bringing in.” There's more commotion outside and Huck realizes that if he stalls Capris for long enough, it just might give enough time for David and whoever else to secure those doors nice and tight. This hospital runs out of Capris palm and having no one to give orders means there's no escape for anyone.

   Right now, himself included. 

   The thought strangely doesn’t affect him. If Tom isn’t in here or in the surgery wing he must be out in the field. Huck has been on the end of many rants about how those are the only places he ever goes. Ironically enough, the battlefield is the safest place for Tom right now. God, please let him be out in the field. Please have him be okay. 

   Since Capris was uncharacteristically quiet during everything that was going on in Huck’s brain, he must be having his own epiphany. One that probably consists of putting two and two together to realize that Huck is the one responsible for the chaos ticking around them. Given by the creepy chuckle that bubbles out of Capris’ lips, he finds this to be particularly funny.  

    “I believed the Union would have corrupted someone close. You would not believe the test I have put my aids through. We will not be so foolish the next time.” The elderly man seems eerily calm right now and Huck has to admit it is throwing him off. 

   “Next time?” Huck questions. He isn’t quite sure if they are seeing the same thing happening around them. “Seem you can barely handle this time. Look around you. Rome is burning.”

    “One diseased sheep never kills the heard. You and your foolish cause will be smothered just like your pathetic flames.” This guy is really starting to give some nice flashbacks to his childhood pastor and how he would always speak as if Jesus was there personally judging him on his vocabulary… which think about it now, a pastor would believe that, wouldn’t they...

    “For someone with so many fancy pieces of paper telling him he’s smart, you sure are one stupid fellow.” Huck replies, not really even trying anymore, this guy is just way too easy to rile up. Huck could probably say his mother is a den of sin and he’d blow a vein. 

    “Not nearly as foolish as someone who thinks he can lie to my face, make me a fool, then get away with it!” Carpis snarls out, like some rabid beast. That rabid snarl shot at Huck by a man who has the audacity to call  _ him  _ the animal. Something just sets Huck over the edge and into the valley of viciousness. 

   “Oh! I’m not sure I ever really planned to get away with it. I’m willing to die for what I believe in. The bigger question is are you?” Huck asks. 

   “That’s something us victors will never have to answer. The Confederate will reign victorious.” Capris is good at dodging questions he doesn’t like, Huck can tell that much.

   “Well, I am glad both the Union and Confederate both had “barricade medical reinforcements in a burning building” on our to do lists. Though I have to say, it would have saved us a lot of trouble if y’all had lit it up yesterday.” Huck almost laughs that last part out a perverted sense of hysteria building up inside of him. 

   “Don't you even dare to say such things.” Capris says, though lower than normal, a whisper of type.

    A cacophony of voices sounds outside the door. Huck catches the words,  _ doors blocked  _ and  _ can’t get out  _ and  _ yes all of them.  _ People are yelling and running and already Huck can tell that they don’t have any time left. Already, Huck can hear beams crashing down, smacking against the ground like roaring thunder deafening him. Smoke from somewhere, hopefully far away, has begun to create a wonderful screen around them.

  Huck just raises his eyebrows in a way he hopes conveys the statement,  _ whatcha gonna do about it? _

  Capris, a smart man in every way but the ways it counts, turns to Huck and draws his pistol up to Huck’s chest and says,

   “Funniest thing about all of this is that you’re gonna be marked as a Confederate casualty.” Huck just smirks and replies, 

   “Anything to make y’all look more inept.” If this is the moment he is destined to die there is no way he is leaving it the way he feels right now, tired, afraid, and very alone. 

   “Go to hell.” Capris spits at him. Huck, using all of the four percent of charm in his body smiles at the human piece of garbage in front of him and replies,

   “I’m already there.” 

Then he braces to get shot in the heart. 


	12. October 23, 1864 -- After 9:59

     Huck doesn’t end up getting shot. Which, considering how many times he’s been shot, is kind of a surprise. All he knows it that one second he’s closing his eyes and bracing his entire body to be shot back by the force of three ounces of metal entering his body. The next, he feels the cold metallic mist of blood being sprayed across his face. 

He can smell it instantaneously as it hits the open air and his hands go immediately to his stomach in order to feel his insides fall out of him and onto the floor. But nothing is there. Everything that is supposed to be inside Huck is still thankfully, inside him. 

     His hands then go to slowly touch the blood that is surely on his face, yet isn’t his. At the same moment, his eyes break contact with the floor and he looks up to see Surgeon General Capris, gun still in hand, but a red stain slowly blooming from his abdomen. His eyes are already glassy and white before he hits the floor, already getting stiff. 

    There is smoke seeping under the door now, a constant reminder that Huck really needs to get this show on the road, but the figure revealed by Capris collapse to the floor, Huck would be able to recognize anywhere. Though right now it seems to be shaking beyond control, due to adrenaline or fear, Huck can’t really tell.

    All he knows is that Tom Sawyer is a mess. 

    He’s covered in blood, and that’s saying something considering that his profession is sewing people back together. It runs up and down his hands making them slick and shiny in the faint light. Huck is terribly confused, which is a state you never want to be in, especially in a high-risk situation such as this. Tom can’t possibly have done what Huck thinks he just did. He must be injured himself. It’s a coincidence.  _ Wait, is Tom actually hurt?  _ This is a mistake.  _ Is there anything I can do to help?  _

    Then Huck sees the scalpel gripped knuckle white in Tom’s right hand. Then he looks down at the fallen body between them and sees the two-foot crevice that has been carved into his back. Tom did indeed smother his hands in Capris’ blood trying to save Huck. Tom doesn’t say anything after Huck’s eyes jump back to him, wide and astonished. Tom just drops the scalpel with a clanging noise as they stare at Capri’s body. 

     Huck hears Tom mutter something along the lines of, “So much for doing no harm.” They soften the pressure pouring down on Huck’s heart that killing your superior officer in order to save your… friend? Well, it might have resulted in something like trauma. 

     Huck takes a step forward towards Tom, one arm outstretched to grasp Tom’s still shaking hand. He’s ready to start spouting all of the comforts that he never received in such moments, even though he’s never done so before. However, before he can even take a single step. Tom drops down and grabs the gun grasped in Capris now stiffening hand.

   And he points it at Huck. 

   “Don’t you even think about coming any closer.” Tom’s voice cracks at the end. Huck slowly puts his arms out, palms up, a sign of weakness for the second time that day, which is honestly two times more than Huck ever wanted to. 

   However, this time he doesn't really think he's going to get shot. Firstly, because Tom is shaking so badly he doesn’t think he could hit him; even though he is standing six feet away. Secondly, because something in Huck’s brain is still refusing him to connect Tom Sawyer as someone who would ever intentionally bring him harm.

    “Tom. Listen to me. We have to-” Huck says using that voice church women do. But Tom cuts him off asking in a voice that he still can’t keep from shaking,

    “Is it true what he said?” 

    “Don’t ask that.” Huck whispers. He doesn’t have it in him to say the word  _ yes  _ if Tom does. 

    “Why not?” Tom asks, ever the one for never listening to the rules. He could never just take what someone said at face value. Huck can’t even find it in him to hate Tom for that right now. After all, it’s one of the things he loves about him. 

    “Because you won’t like the answer.” Huck responds. 

    “I have gone too long without asking. I should have the first day I fucking met you.” Tom spits this out between teeth that are clenched in anger towards more than just Huck. His eyes are shining, threatening to spill how angry he is at Huck, at the world, but also at himself. 

    “Tom. Listen, I promise I will tell you everything. Anything you ask, I promise to answer, but we need to leave now.” Huck hasn’t the slightest idea how fast this fire is burning but given by the slowly increasing smoke and noise it’s got to mean bad news.

     “Were you seriously not going to say anything? Anything at all?” Tom asks. He’s stuck on this. Trapped and unable to move past it despite his own damn life being in danger and Huck doesn’t have the time or words to explain it all right now.

     “You didn’t ask so I just thought you weren’t paying attention! Tom, we have to go.” Huck barks out throwing some caution out the window and taking a step forward. Tom, who had previously been more holding the pistol than aiming it, jerks it up with the precision born of army training. Huck freezes.

     “I didn’t ask because I never wanted you to lie to me. But, clearly you were doing that anyway.” Tom’s every word is punctuated with malice. 

     “I never lied to you Tom.” Huck whispered. He didn’t want to say it. Previously, Huck thought the fact would be a blessing, a gift of his forwardness. Now, it just feels like sticking your finger into a wound. Huck sees Tom pause and rake over everything Huck’s ever told him. He's smart enough to see the holes and assumptions he filled in, filling in the gaps Huck purposefully left empty. 

    “That’s cold.” Tom croaks. “Why? Why would you even do something like this?” 

    “You said it yourself. That very first time we met. You have to help those in need.” Huck sees Tom grind his teeth together at any mention of their past. “Nobody is free if your freedom is based on the oppression of others.” 

    “That’s not what I meant.” Tom replied, the confidence in his voice slowly dropping as he continued on. “Why? Why would you do this to me?” Crashes and screams from outside the room interrupt their conversation. There is another shattering boom as what is probably another very important load-bearing column falls to the ground, defeated by the fire. 

    “Come with me.” Huck pleads. He is not above begging at this point in time. “They are going to burn this place to the ground.” 

    “Didn’t you hear him?” Tom asks gesturing to the corpse on the floor. “You are going to lose.” Tom tells Huck this as if it is already written, but there is something in the way his voice quivers that shows he doesn’t quite believe it. 

   “That may be. We may lose the battle. I don’t know. But we are going to win this war.” Huck’s words bleed with the absolute truth because he needs Tom to listen to him now, if nowhere else. “Tom you are smarter than anyone here surely you can see that. The world isn’t built to live like this.” By the carnage building up outside, he knows the Union would rather die fighting than live in a world created on the backs of others.

    “But how long can this,” Tom throws his arms to indicate the complete havoc around them, “go on for? God, Huck! How many more people have to die? How many Huck? I’ve seen them! I still see them. Every single one of them is stuck in my head and I can’t make them leave.” The wetness is back under Tom’s eyes and it clouds his eyes, almost as if he were seeing something else right now. 

    “That doesn’t mean you have to die as well!” Huck shouts. 

    “Well, maybe I want that. Maybe, that’s better than choosing between my god damn duty and someone I love! Okay?” Tom shot back, everything he’s feeling flying out with his words at Huck,

    “Don’t say that Thomas.” Huck says, astounded that he missed all of this pain living inside Tom. Then there is another crash and Huck knows he will have to try and heal all of this hurt later. “Please, I know what they are doing we have to leave, now.” 

    “Were you ever going to tell me?” Tom asks, his voice barely above a whisper. “Or what? Just hope all of this would sort itself out somehow?” His voice hitches up at the end as he is probably imagining the repercussions of those words. What they mean if they are true. 

    “No Jesus, Tom! I tried to tell you but, come on! How exactly do you begin that conversation?” Huck asked exasperated. It’s not like he wanted to leave all this out! It’s just what you do!

    “I don’t know! But I’m not the one who snuck into a Confederate hospital to spy on them!” Tom yelled back at Huck, his anger mashing together with all of the betrayal and despair and crippling love. 

    “I promise you, I never wanted you to get hurt. In fact, I never thought any of this would happen.” Huck chokes out. He never thought in a thousand lifetimes any of this would happen. It was so far-fetched his mind couldn’t even come up with something a ridiculous as falling in love. 

    “Was that all I was? That whatever this was then? Some means to an end because that’s seriously fucked up man.” Tom chokes out. His voice is swelling up and Huck knows what that means and if Tom starts crying, all bets are off. Huck is going to start crying as well. “Was I the only one stupid enough to care about you? And- and you saw that opportunity and ran with it?” The first tears start to fall down Tom’s cheeks smearing the ash that’s already landed on them, giving him a sickly look of someone deranged. 

     “Were you just going to let me die? Is that it? After all you said about humanity, you were just going to let me burn?” Tom manages to get out. Huck is going to start crying as well. His throat is sticky and all of the air seems to escape from his body. 

     “No. No, no no.”  He stumbles forward not even caring in the slightest if he is shot at this point. Huck holds Tom’s face in his hands, running his fingers over the tears slipping down Tom’s face. Huck’s pushing back Tom’s hair out of his face, everything about his motions is desperate as he needs Thomas to know that he was willing to get shot if it meant that Tom was safe. 

    “Please, look at me. Thomas, listen.” Tom just shakes his head as a small choked sob noise comes from his throat. “Thomas.” Huck tries to shush the heart wrenching noises coming from the other as he drops his forehead down unto Tom’s. Maybe he can cram all of his thoughts into Toms’ skull and all of Huck’s love for him will fill up the holes left by the hate he harbored for himself. He can feel Tom’s hurried and uneven breath across his cheeks which says he’s unsuccessful.

    “I would look for you to my damn grave. I have been running around this godforsaken hospital looking for you. I would give you my own life if I could to get you out of here right now.” Huck breathes out barely even thinking about what he is saying, it just comes out, as honest as he possibly can. 

    Tom still won’t look at him though. His eyes are still staring down at the ground and his breathing is still erratic at best. 

    “Please. Tom. Look at me.” Huck pleads. 

    “You tore your stitches. Again.” It’s soft. Ridiculously so, but Huck is only two inches away and he can hear every single glorious syllable. Huck looks down as well. He sees that yes, indeed, his leg is once again bleeding. Not as bad as any of the previous times. It was almost completely healed prior to his Olympic level enthusiasm spirit through the house. Which, is probably what triggered any such bleeding in the first place.

   “Yes. I suppose I did.” Huck laughs out. 

   “You know you might lose feeling because of that.” Tom blinks and looks up and locks eyes with Huck. He looks at him with overcompensating amounts of confidence to hide someone who is terribly afraid. 

  Now didn’t seem like the time for Huck to point out that he hadn’t even registered that he was injured until Tom pointed it out… and it wasn’t because of the adrenaline. Much like the universe, some things are just collateral. 

   “Come with me. I don’t care if you hate me.” It’s a lie he breathes easily. “However, I can not be the reason you die. Just- just, let me get you out of this. Okay?” Huck begs.

    “I am not going.” Tom tells him locking his jaw and giving him the face of someone who’s too damn stubborn for their own good.

    “I’m not leaving without you.” Huck tells him. If he burns with the building so be it, but he’s not leaving now.

    “Well, I’m not… going with you. I’m just going in the same direction.” Tom mumbles crossing his arms. Huck will take it though. Hell, it’s better than he was hoping for at this point. Immediately, his brain fills up a checklist of about twenty different objectives he needs to complete now that its primary function has been taken care of. He grabs a hold of Tom, which is easier said than done, and drags him to the door. They peer out into the hallway where they see people running around like chickens with their heads cut off as well as more smoke and ash.

    “I guess we are not going that way.” Huck mutters under his breath.

    “I don’t know. The fire really brings out the traitor in your eyes.” Tom responds in an attempt to slash at Huck with the only weapon he has right now.

    “Technically, I didn’t betray… anyone….” Huck fades out realizing that Tom does not care if he was never technically a real Confederate soldier. “Anyone, besides you. I’m sorry.”  Tom just raises his eyebrows and lets out a very ticked off scoff.

    Interrupting Tom’s very apparent signs he is still very not over Huck’s lying, there are some voices that sound like they are coming towards them and they do not sound like the friendly type. They also sound like they found the body he dropped at the end of the stairs. Huck looks over his shoulder at the only viable escape option at this point and prays to his twelve year old self that he can still do what is about to be required of him. He grabs Tom by the arm and pulls him back in the room shutting the door behind them.

    “Help me move this.” Huck tells Tom as he starts pushing the only heavy looking piece of furniture in front of the door. 

    “Don’t think you can tell me what to do.” Tom snaps back at the same time he grabs the other side and starts pushing anyway. Huck just laughs and says,

    “I never thought I could tell you what to do. I don’t think anyone could do that.”

    “Why are we even moving this in the first place. It’s not like they are going to be concerned with anything you could do while this entire place is burning down.” Tom says after shooting Huck a look that says he wishes he could actually shoot the other man. 

    “There are some very pissed off people looking for me.” Huck replies. He’s hoping that Tom will just take that and not ask any more questions.

     “What did you do?” Tom asks because he never does anything Huck wants him too.

    “I might have killed a man by punching out his throat.” Huck answers as calm as he possibly can. It’s not a big deal. Really it’s not.

    “You did  _ what  _ now?” Tom shouts looking at Huck like he’s speaking in tongues. 

    “In the grand setting of things I don’t really think it is that big of a deal. I mean, you just stabbed your boss. I just took a man down because I needed to find you and make sure you were safe.” Huck tells him brushing his hands off on his pants and walking towards the aforementioned dead boss.

   “You can’t do that.” Tom yells from behind him, following him across the room.

   “Do what?” Huck asks as he grabs the scalpel that is still covered in Capris’ blood off the floor from where Tom had dropped it earlier. 

    “Treating me like I’m something special to you. That’s just cruel now. There is no one left for me to break your cover too.” Tom spits at Huck, gesturing out as if to emphasize his point. 

    “I hate to tell you, but I still love you. Whether or not you want me too, or even if you don’t anymore.” Huck tells him exasperated.

    Tom just mumbles something in return. 

    “I did not catch any of that.” Huck says. He’s only half listening now as he takes the scalpel and tries to cut the sealant holding the bars of the window to the frame. However, it happens to be quite smokey as well as hot and this damn thing is still somewhat covered in warm slippery blood.

    “You never listen to anything! Do you?” Tom complains grabbing the scalpel and slicing through the sealant in a couple of really impressive strokes. “I never said that I didn’t love you. I just don't know if the person I love even exists right now.”

    “Are you open to finding out?” Huck asks, pushing out the window frame, watching it fall below.

   “Maybe. We’ll see. I’m working on it.” Is Tom’s answer.

   “How about you work on it while I try to get both of us down from here.” Huck responds. He swings himself out of the window, most of this just muscle memory from his childhood at this point. They are lucky enough that this house was built with extensive amounts of rafter decor and ornate things that you only find on houses of people who have too much money.

    Huck is able to swing himself down to the balcony on their right. In another life, it must have been the bedroom of the owners of the house but is now just more fuel for the fire creeping closer. Creeping very close. Tom swings one leg out of the window when he looks back into the room and says,

     “Oh shit.” 

     “What!” Huck says his stomach dropping.

     “I think we’ve run out of time.” Tom responds sounding distant. “I think the wallpaper is on fire. I didn’t think that could happen.” Smoke starts pouring into the room now its ashy presence rushing towards them choking out any oxygen in the air. Huck throws out his hands in a panic trying to grab Tom and pull him over but Tom, ever the gentleman, just smacks them away.

    “Do not touch me.” He hisses out. 

    “My apologies.” Huck replies taking his hands away. One battle at a time Huck. One at a time. 

    “Thinks I can’t even climb out of a two story window.” Tom mutters to himself. “Who do you think I am?”

    “Now is really not the time.” Huck reminds Tom watching him pull himself over and away from the much real and very more important burning fire.

    “There is always time to prove you are capable of not being a fucking girl about things.” Tom tells Huck like it is obvious. 

     Huck resists the urge to roll his eyes and gets on the opposite side of the railing, drops down, and throws his foot over to the window on the second floor. It burns his hands as the fire inside is already consuming the room. He bites down on his tongue to keep from calling out and drops himself down to the ground below. 

     He stands up and sees that Tom is smart enough to start following behind in his footsteps. He’s on the railing about ready to throw himself over to the window when there is this earth shattering cracking noise. Huck ducks his head throwing his hands over his face as he feels chunks of glass spray out from the house. He looks up to see the window has been blown out by the fire that is now well on its way to where Tom still is. 

    “You just have to jump!” Huck shouts. There is no other way to do this. Jesus, Tom should have gone first. Why didn’t he let him go first? 

    “What?” Tom yells.

    “You’ll burn yourself up! You have to just jump!” Huck yells, the ash sticks in his throat and makes him cough. It burns his eyes but he can’t think about that now.

    “There is no way I can make that!” Tom shouts down, maybe thinking that broken bones are worse than being burned alive.

    “I will catch you. You are going to have to trust me.” Huck shouts as loud as he can past the flickering flames.

    “Like I would  _ ever  _ do that again.” Tom cries out. 

    “JUMP!” Huck screams.

And he does. He puts his trust in Huck, screws his eyes shut and just vaults himself from the railing straight towards Huck’s body. 

    Huck and Tom would both like to say that the end result of this maneuver was something really romantic and well planned. Something worthy of a cinematic masterpiece. They soul settle for a lot of things better than what it turned out to be. 

    Because, the truth of the matter is that they are both trying to beat several hundred tons of burning house, in the middle of the night, during a battle. Thus, the result they got from Tom launching himself at Huck, someone who is equal if not larger in size, with the expectation of him being able to withstand the force, was them colliding together in a tectonic fashion. Huck grabs onto whatever part of Tom he possibly could and both of the collapse into the charred grass with all the grace and precision of a large stick of dynamite. There was about as much noise as well.

Huck untangles himself from Tom pulling his limbs back to himself and asks,

    “Are you okay?” 

    “I’m not dead if that’s what you are asking.” Tom coughs out. His face is an absolute mess. It is covered in ash and sweat, but right now Huck could kiss him. It’s the one thing that means they fucking made it out alive. “Help me up.” Tom commands throwing a hand up into the air.

    “I thought you told me not to touch you.” Huck remarks.

    “Hey careful with the attitude. I can still shoot you.” Tom replies snapping his fingers.

    “You kept a gun through a fire?” Huck grabs his hand anyway pulling him up. He likes the way they stick to his own sweaty ones. They are rough and have nothing feminine about them and Huck wants nothing to change. Except for maybe the fact they are now fleeing for their lives.

    “Yeah? What exactly was I supposed to do with it?” Tom asks. He attempts to wipe the ash from his face but it just smears inky black streaks across his face.

    “I don’t know? Throw it out the window? A gun and a fire was how I ended up here in the first place, and you saw how well that turned out.” Huck comments pointing to his now completely numb leg.

    “Wait. You mean you got injured accidently?” Tom asks complete confusion adorning his face.

    “Yeah, of course. What do you think happened?” Huck answered, not really sure if he actually wanted his own question answered back. 

    “I don’t know. That your Union buddies shot you or something! Then just dumped you for us to find.” Tom yelled back throwing his arms out in defense.

    “No! Jesus! That’s so morbid. I would never intentionally injure myself.” Huck reminds himself that he shouldn’t lie. “Except for that one time I had to tear out my own stitches to see you - but that’s it.”

     “I knew it.” Tom exclaims. “I knew no one could be that clumsy. Also, if you ever do something like that again I will break you.” Tom adds shoving Huck in the chest as if to prove his point

    “Noted.” Huck replies. The sound of branches snapping pierce through the moment. Tom and Huck both turn to see two men sprinting towards them with shouts of  _ That’s him  _ and  _ Shoot them.  _

    “Duck.” Tom commands and Huck hits the ground as two bullets go sailing over him. Tom wastes no time after that rushing over to Huck and pulling him up with the kind of fever that says,  _ you aren’t like, dead right?  _

__ “That’s two to zero I believe?” Tom snipes.

    “Capris didn’t count..” Huck responds. “I can’t believe you just shot them.” 

    “Both of them count, because both of them didn’t give me much of a choice. They were going to shoot you.” Right as the words come out of his mouth Tom realizes how that sounds for someone who supposedly hates Huck. “Don’t let this go to your head Finn. I am still extremely pissed at you.”

    “I would expect nothing less.” Huck says, but their hands are still clasped together from when Tom pulled him up. He knows how to count the real victories, and since Tom hasn’t punched him yet he says he is extremely victorious right now. “We should really get going. David shouldn’t be far from here.”

    “Who is David?” Tom asks.

    “David is Sophia’s husband.” Huck answers. 

    “Sophia? As in your sister Sophia? Please do not tell me she is also here and we have to go back for her.” Tom moans running his hand through his hair in a fashion that should not do the things it is doing to Huck right now.

    “No. She should be completely safe.” Huck assures Tom. “Also, she’s not my actual sister.” Huck mumbles at the end realizing that doesn’t really help him right now.

    “Really? Is that so Mr. I Never Lied?” Tom snaps back.

    “Hush. We’re basically family.” Huck tells him. “We all are, in times like this you got to stick with those you trust.” He hopes Tom can at least understand that much.

    “Yeah.” Tom says softly looking Huck up and down. “I guess you do.” 

    Huck turns his back to look at the inferno in their wake. It’s the first time he's had time to look back at the place he's spent the past week. Honestly, it’s underwhelming, and that’s not because it’s entirely on fire. It looks like nothing special. Just a building that will soon be nothing more than decomposing carbon in a few hours. However, Huck supposes that is all it is now. He has everything that was important to him, with him. He squeezes its hand. And they take off running into the forest.

    Huck knows that the only reason he is able to make it through a forest filled with branches to slash through your nice and soft skin is due to his childhood spent bolting through trees as if his life depended on it, which it usually did, 

He did not miss that feeling. 

    Which is to say he was pleasantly surprised at how capable Tom Sawyer was at hurdling over gaps in the ground, with only the blistering fire behind them giving off light that was quickly swallowed by the tree left in their wake, at a speed that matched Huck’s. He'd have to ask about that later. He'd have to ask about a lot later. 

    They slow their pace once Huck begins to get a sense that this is the place David described he would be waiting. Huck is just starting to worry about something going wrong when he hears the rustling of leaves and someone emerges from the darkness

Tom spins around. He throws his hand out in front of Huck as if to shield him.

    “Who’s there.” He calls out. Huck squints into the darkness trying to make out a shape. 

    “David?” Huck calls. “Is that you?”

    “Huck?” The figure responds stepping out from the abyss. There stands David, complete with cheeky grin and hair that could do with a good trim.

    “You know this guy?” Tom whispers to him.

    “Unfortunately.” This gets a scoff from David. “This is who we are looking for.” Huck steps forward not sure if this is a moment that calls for some sort of hand shake of thanks or not. 

    “Who’s this?” David asks Huck, pointing directly at Tom.

    “Are we here to ask questions or are we here to get the fuck away from that battle happening right over there.” Huck points to the direction that gunfire is resounding from. Out of the pan and into the fire seems to be the situation.

    “You had better know what you are doing Finn.” David responds looking from Huck to Tom and back again, just shaking his head softly.

    “I know.” Huck replies softly.

    For your sake, I hope it’s worth it.” David sighs. Huck knew for the first time in a long time he actually knew what he was doing - which was funny because everyone thought he didn't. “What’s your name son?”

    “Tom.” He says, then as an afterthought. “Sawyer.” David looks Tom up and down. Looks at the ash smeared across his face. Looks at the blood crusted on his hands. Looks at the telltale signs of the Confederacy on his clothes. 

    “Well, Tom Sawyer. Welcome to the Union.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it. The last real chapter. Chapter thirteen is more of an artsy epilogue that will be out as soon as I can get my hands on a scanner. Anyway, it’s been real. Thanks for sticking around even during the trademark segment when I don't update for a millennium. Y'all are too kind to me honestly. If there is anything you want to see me write, hit me up. I do have something else in the works. When it will come out??? I have no clue. As always, you can find me on tumblr @i-am-arkham-asylum


	13. March 23, 2018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One hundred and four years does a lot to history.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do not read this on moblie  
> \--  
> i wrote that letter at a friends house on the back or an amazon receipt for a book she bought for 26 cents. first one to guess the book wins.   
> \---  
> find me on tumblr @i-am-arkham-asylum


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